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  • ”Who’s gonna stand up and save the Earth? Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?”
    – Neil Young
  • ”We’ve globalized an utterly untenable economic model of hyperconsumerism. It’s now successfully spreading across the world, and it’s killing us.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”As I see it, humanity needs to reduce its impact on the Earth urgently and there are three ways to achieve this: we can stop consuming so many resources, we can change our technology and we can reduce the growth of our population.”
    – Sir David Attenborough
  • ”There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”
    – Mahatma Ghandhi
  • ”I have – over the last five years – quite rapidly become a Malthusian. I have been won over by the data, and I have been won over by the logic of the math.”
    – Jeremy Grantham
    investment strategist
  • ”In the short term, we must realize that we have better ways to create jobs and build the economy than holding an everything must go sale on our precious resources.”
    – Dr. David Suzuki
  • ”Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
    – E.F. Schumacher
    author: Small is Beautiful
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”We can share the earth and take care of it together, rather than trying to possess it, destroying the beauty of life in the process.”
    – Dalai Lama
  • ”The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”
    – Richard Branson
  • ”If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but new programs.”
    – Daniel Quinn
    author: Ishmael and The Story of B
  • ”Population is the multiplier of everything we do wrong.”
    – Dr. Martha M. Campbell
  • ”This is not about whales anymore. It’s about us.”
    – Thomas Friedman
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”We can’t frack our way back to economic prosperity; nor can we unplug a coal plant, plug in a solar panel, and go on expanding population and consumption.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children.”
    – Joe Romm
    physicist
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”The free-market fundamentalists will tell you that more growth, more stuff and 9 billion people going shopping is the best we can do. They’re wrong. We can be more. We can be much more.”
    – Paul Gilding
    author: The Great Disruption
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
    – Kenneth Boulding
    economist
  • ”Because of this civilization’s obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way.”
    – Adam Sacks
  • ”We can’t frack our way back to economic prosperity; nor can we unplug a coal plant, plug in a solar panel, and go on expanding population and consumption.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but new programs.”
    – Daniel Quinn
    author: Ishmael and The Story of B
  • ”On the one hand, it’s politically impossible to stop growth. On the other hand, it’s biophysically impossible to continue it ad infinitum. So, which impossibility is fundamentally impossible?”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
  • ”At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”I have – over the last five years – quite rapidly become a Malthusian. I have been won over by the data, and I have been won over by the logic of the math.”
    – Jeremy Grantham
    investment strategist
  • ”Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
    – Edward Abbey
  • ”We’re going to need some kind of radical break with our past behavior if we’re to engineer a viable future.”
    – Mark Buchanan
    Bloomberg columnist
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth’s living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence.”
    – George Monbiot
    Guardian columnist
  • ”There will inevitably come a time that the society drastically needs to change the way it interacts with the environment, or it will lose its coherence.”
    – Sander van der Leeuw
  • ”Long-term sustainability requires a materially smaller economy (the pie) shared more equitably (not equally) by a smaller population.”
    – William Rees
    Co-originator of Ecological Footprint Analysis
  • ”In today’s full world, resources are not only scarce but have become the limiting factor”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
Donald Trump and growth chart turning down

Trump Can’t Keep It Up (Economic Growth) – Podcast Episode #17

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog, Podcast

We should NOT be celebrating (or pursuing) 4.1% economic growth, according to co-host Dave Gardner. Listen to this podcast to find out why pursuing GDP growth today is suicidal. Also on tap, listener comments about Earth Overshoot Day (the subject of our last podcast), and more single-use plastics we want to avoid. Dave stumps us with this question: What single-use disposable item do we want to see used more widely? Try to guess before Dave gives you the answer halfway into this episode.


In this episode we hear U.S. President Donald Trump brag about economic growth at a 4.1% annualized rate. Even his sharpest critics celebrate robust growth, as we hear from Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe. Many economists responded to this news that they don’t think we can keep that growth rate up, but their reasons differ from Dave’s. On a finite planet, perpetual growth in economic throughput is impossible. . . .

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What is Earth Overshoot Day?

Earth Overshoot Day (Podcast Episode 16)

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog, Podcast

Did you know we are in overshoot? What does that mean, and what should we do about it? Also in this episode, which has a smaller footprint – milk, or milk alternatives like almond milk? Dana informs us that, “Eating food is one of the worst things you can do for the environment.” Are some health departments preventing bulk filling of reusable containers? Carrying reusable utensils and napkin on your travels. And choosing carefully the trash can in which to deposit your refuse.

August 1, 2018 is Earth Overshoot Day. Data collected and analyzed by the Global Footprint Network tells us this is the date when humanity’s annual demand on nature begins to exceed what Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate in the entire year. If it falls anytime before December 31, it means we’re using more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate – through activity like overfishing, overharvesting forests, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than ecosystems can absorb. . . .

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Do Only Villains Care About Overpopulation? (Podcast Episode 15)

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

In Avengers: Infinity War the villain Thanos wants to solve overpopulation by exterminating half the population of the universe. Whenever overpopulation pops up in the movies, it’s always a villain with an inhumane solution. Dave and Dana discuss whether this helps or harms the cause of achieving a sustainable human population (yes, the world IS overpopulated today, and the forecasts are to add several billion more). Aren’t there humane, noble solutions to overpopulation?

Plus: Are we hardwired to reproduce? Population control, Paul Ehrlich, Thomas Malthus, Dan Brown’s Inferno novel and movie, Soylent Green, ZPG, and Dave’s Top 10 Overpopulation Films also come up. (See links below) . . .

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GrowthBusters Podcast

One Thing That Will Guarantee Climate Disaster (Podcast Episode 14)

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog, Podcast

While the U.S. announced intention to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement is bad news, it seems to have inspired a lot of carbon-reducing promises at other levels across the country. And that is good news. In this episode of the GrowthBusters podcast, Dana and Dave lament the biggest hurdle in the path to a survivable climate – the fact that economic growth is the number one public policy goal around the world. In many cases it is the one thing policymakers won’t sacrifice in efforts to curb the growth of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

We seem to be putting all our eggs in the technology basket, hoping we can run an ever-growing economy on more and more solar, wind, geothermal and hydro power and use technology to shrink that mushrooming global economy’s carbon footprint. Some economists think we can do that. Many scientists do not. Ozzie Zehner, in his 2012 book Green Illusions, noted several studies that indicate we might need to change our ways beyond just switching power sources. . . .

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Downsize Me (Podcast Episode 13)

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog, Podcast

Imagine you can live large – trophy house, fancy toys, caveman diet – but the costs are miniscule. Would you find that appealing? Or would you rather simplify your lifestyle and make your footprint the thing that’s miniscule? Is downsizing simply a way to supersize your consumption without maximizing your footprint? The latest episode of the GrowthBusters podcast examines these questions, as explored in the film, Downsizing.

“Downsizing may be about a small world, but it is an audacious, out-sized peach of a picture.”  – Ian Freer, Empire Magazine

The film, starring Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig, is now available for rent and purchase – on Amazon, GooglePlay and YouTube. The DVD is available on Netflix. GrowthBusters director Dave Gardner is joined by new co-host Dana Hicky to discuss the film, and that means overpopulation, overshoot, overconsumption, and climate change are on the agenda. . . .

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