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  • ”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
  • ”There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”
    – Mahatma Ghandhi
  • ”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’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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
    – Edward Abbey
  • ”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
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”This is not about whales anymore. It’s about us.”
    – Thomas Friedman
  • ”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 today’s full world, resources are not only scarce but have become the limiting factor”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”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
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”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
  • ”Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
    – Kenneth Boulding
    economist
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Who’s gonna stand up and save the Earth? Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?”
    – Neil Young
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”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
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”Population is the multiplier of everything we do wrong.”
    – Dr. Martha M. Campbell
  • ”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

Save the Polar Bear in Your Bedroom

It’s been a great night. Romantic dinner for two. Fine organic wine. A little dancing in the living room. John Klemmer’s saxophone is putting you in the mood. It’s the right time of the night…for making love. Good thing you have the right tool in your hands to save the polar bear – an endangered species condom.

Photo by Ansgar Walk

Photo by Ansgar Walk

Scientists estimate that 25 years ago our population and consumption levels began to exceed Earth’s capacity to sustain us. Yet for years it’s been politically incorrect to suggest we humans ought to put a lid on our impulse to reproduce. So incorrect, in fact, that many environmental organizations have been unwilling to admit human population growth is a major contributor to the environmental devastation they’re fighting. Most groups settle for just slowing down the rate of destruction, for fear that campaigning for responsible population policies would limit membership or funding. . . .

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Might as Well Face It; We’re Addicted to Growth

My hometown has been making international headlines lately. Colorado Springs has become the poster child for local governments slashing services in response to declining sales tax revenue.

The budget-balancing challenges facing Colorado Springs are worsened by the recession and by voter reluctance to embrace tax increases. But the real story is that of an addict crashing. Unable to get immediate gratification from a quick fix of the addictive drug, the addict’s life crumbles. It is painful. It’s destructive. And to the addict, the solution is obvious – another hit of that elixir.

ABC News, National Public Radio, CNN and even Canada’s National Post have provided the latest high-profile glimpses of Colorado Springs: . . .

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Population Taboo – Kiss it Adieu!

Today marks the beginning of Global Population Speak Out.

It’s human nature to blend in with the crowd. Nobody wants to be the only one with a given viewpoint. The cultural taboo on discussing overpopulation renders politicians, scientists and other opinion leaders reluctant to mention population when discussing both causes and solutions of modern challenges. Famed physicist Al Bartlett (author of the ultra-logical Laws Relating to Sustainability) nicely summed up his frustration about this in the Spring 2008 Teachers Clearinghouse for Science and Society Education Newsletter: Why Have Scientists Succumbed To Political Correctness? (Incidentally, my film, Hooked on Growth, is dedicated to Professor Bartlett.) . . .

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Colorado Water: Working on the Wrong Problem!

Recently I was unable to attend and film an important public meeting about future water supply planning for Colorado. Glen Colton was able to attend, and offered this incisive commentary about Colorado water planning. Glen points out some deficiencies in thinking that can apply to numerous resources in many parts of the world, so Glen agreed to be our guest blogger on this topic.

Glen’s Commentary:

I recently attended a meeting in Loveland, Colorado discussing the South Platte Basin water report (Water for the 21st Century).  There were about 150 – 200 people in attendance, many of them elected officials, water district people, municipal water people, developers, and others with a stake in getting more water for their towns  There were also a smattering of other folks including a few environmentalists and several people from Trout Unlimited that I knew. . . .

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What Copenhagen Demonstrators Want You to Know

What was the message of the demonstrators in Copenhagen? Some groups, such as Bill McKibben’s 350.org, were pushing for nations to agree to ambitious goals to get carbon dioxide levels down to 350 ppm. According to environmental journalist Zoe Cormier, many were trying to get the word out that we cannot get CO2 levels down as long as we remain hooked on growth – clinging to a system that doesn’t know the meaning of the word enough.

Zoe, the brains behind www.AxisOfEco.com was the eyes and ears of the GrowthBusters project during last month’s climate talks. My apologies for only now posting her final report, taped on December 23. My schedule; my bad. Her analysis, however, is both good and timeless. . . .

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