One would have to live in a hole to be unaware of the crushing crises we face thanks to the growing scale of the human enterprise on our planet. It’s a subject we desperately need to address. Discussion of the overpopulation part of this equation, however, remains a mere whisper in public discourse. When making the film, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, I was warned not to include the subject.

I was reminded recently of the most maddening of the reasons many steer clear of this subject. I’ll start the discussion with a list of the top five things that keep us from getting busy doing what needs to be done to avoid driving our civilization right off the overshoot cliff: . . .

Tomorrow is Earth Day, the one day of the year we have anywhere close to a critical mass of people actually thinking about maintaining our life-support systems.

Here are a few things you wouldn’t do on a spaceship:

1. Disassemble it in order to create jobs and have a robust economy
2. Pack it with more people than it can sustainably support
3. Consume more food or water than its stores can supply for the duration of the voyage
4. Smoke, fart, urinate or defecate beyond the processing ability of its systems
5. Pay attention to its maintenance just one day a year

We get a complete passenger safety briefing (often by video) before takeoff whenever we fly. This is because mistakes at 30,000 feet can be deadly. Flying through space is even more unforgiving, yet we passengers and crew on Spaceship Earth never get a passenger safety briefing. Until now:
SPACESHIP EARTH PASSENGER SAFETY BRIEFING . . .

This week Huffington Post published a blog by Julie Cole titled 6 Reasons to Have 6 Kids. Im not sure how much attention anyone is paying over there to what their bloggers are doing, but Cole’s piece cannot be defined as “progressive.” Progressive thinking about family size will take into account several factors that go unmentioned in her blog. They are clearly unconsidered by any couple that has conceived 6 children in the modern world. More about that below.

Meanwhile, at xoJane.com, Sarah Brown recently penned a bit of a screed about the way she is treated as a woman who’s chosen to be childfree. How Not to be a Dick to Your Childhood Friends appropriately calls out what I’ll call Victorian attitudes many still have about the role of women in the world as baby-factories. It fails, however, to point out one of the wisest reasons for choosing not to conceive children. . . .

It’s Valentine’s Day and romance is in the air. Every year at this time I feel it’s a good time to remind loving couples of the most loving and compassionate act they can take – being very intentional about when and whether they conceive a child, and making the informed, responsible decision to have a zero, one or – at most, two – child family.

Why? Because on a full planet, overpopulated at 7.2 billion, we need to do all we can to give our kids a shot at living good lives. Adding 8, or even 4, kids to the population doesn’t improve their odds.

Lynsey and I were discussing this the other day and she turned me on to www.someecards.com, so we each made one. Funny how I didn’t really think hers was all that great. And she thought hers was better than mine. Usually Lynsey is the hip and trendy one. So, what do you think? Can you do better? . . .

How can the herding instinct hinder or help us in our shift to a sustainable civilization?

Fracking, tar sands, and potential Arctic drilling have some convinced we’ve delayed Peak Oil for years and years. There are many experts, however, who present a solid case for ignoring the boosters’ optimism. Some expect we’ll be experiencing serious post-peak oil shocks this decade. Of course, we should voluntarily be leaving oil in the ground in order to avoid the worst of greenhouse gas induced climate disruption. Regardless, most of us will be living through oil-withdrawal before we depart this world. I was invited to offer the GrowthBusters perspective on this subject in the premiere issue of Shift magazine. You can find the magazine and my commentary here. I thought it worth sharing here: . . .