The Social and Ecological Costs of Population Denialism | In memory of Haydn Washington

EcocentrismDegrowthSocio-Economic JusticePopulation DenialismHuman Supremacy
Written By Population Balance

We were scheduled to speak with Dr. Helen Kopnina and Dr. Haydn Washington on December 16th when this episode was recorded. We are very sad to report that Haydn died on December 10th after a battle with cancer. We are grateful to be joined by his friend and colleague, Helen, and we dedicate this episode to the memory of Haydn Washington.

Highlights of this episode include:

  • Helen’s tribute to Haydn and his uncompromising commitment to sustainability and justice

  • The definition of ecocentrism and Helen’s personal introduction to an eco-centric worldview through nature’s healing power

  • Helen’s personal experiences of living in Soviet Union, the US, Europe, and India and how that’s informed her views on degrowth and sustainability

  • The social and ecological costs of population denialism, and the loss of academic integrity on this topic

  • A recognition of our need to unite efforts across the different liberation movements in order to maximize our impacts against systems of oppression

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Haydn Washington 0:00

    I opened my eyes to stare into deep black eyes a few meters away - fascinated eyes, eyes of otherness. There was no fear, none at all. We watched in mutual astonishment at the incredibility of our being. We existed at this moment in time in the gulf between our histories and separate evolution was gone. Behind the sawed steep banks of sand and vertical orange sandstone cliffs, it was just on dawn. There was no thought, nothing but the startling desire to hang on to a connection that we knew could not last. Holding onto our harmony for yet another unlikely moment.

    Alan Ware 0:40

    Those moving words are from the late environmental scientist, writer, and activist Dr. Haydn Washington. He's describing the transformative encounter with a lyrebird he had while hiking as an eighteen-year-old. The lyrebird can mimic all kinds of sounds better than any other bird in the world. And yet, as Haydn noticed, this incredible bird did not have the human voice needed in order to speak up and to protect its own home. Washington and others became the human voices that did speak up for the lyrebird and many other species through a multi-year conservation effort that led to the creation of Wollemi National Park in New South Wales, Australia. Haydn was scheduled to be in the studio with us today, December 16th, along with his colleague and friend Dr. Helen Kopnina. We're very sad to report that he died on Saturday, December 10th after a battle with cancer. We are grateful to be joined by Dr. Kopnina today, and we will be dedicating this episode to the memory of Haydn Washington. Here's a brief introduction to Haydn. Dr. Haydn Washington was an environmental scientist and writer at the Institute of Environmental Studies at University New South Wales, Australia. His particular interests were sustainability and what this really means, solutions to the environmental crisis, human dependence on nature, and humanity's denial of its problems. He was also keenly interested in wilderness and the sense of wonder humanity feels towards nature.

    Nandita Bajaj 2:18

    Welcome to the Overpopulation Podcast where we tirelessly make overshoot and overpopulation common knowledge. That's the first step in right-sizing the scale of our human footprint so that it is in balance with life on Earth, enabling all species to thrive. I'm Nandita Bajaj, co-host and Executive Director of Population Balance.

    Alan Ware 2:42

    I'm Alan Ware, co-host of the podcast and researcher with Population Balance, the first and only nonprofit organization globally that draws the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, and ecological overshoot and their combined devastating impacts on social, reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice.

    Nandita Bajaj 3:03

    And thanks to you, our wonderful listeners, we now rank in the top 2% of all the podcasts globally. In addition to the podcast, we also run virtual educational programs at schools and conferences with a goal of empowering people to make liberated and responsible reproductive and consumptive choices. We do all of this with a really small staff, and we count on you to keep doing this important work, and we hope you'll consider supporting our transformative programs. And now on to today's guest, Dr. Helen cook. Nina is the Assistant Professor in the Department of Newcastle business school at Northumbria University. She also coordinates and teaches at the Sustainable Business Program at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. She has authored or co authored over 200 peer reviewed articles and 17 books on the subject of environmental sustainability, biodiversity conservation, and environmental education. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Helen. We have been so incredibly inspired by your work over the years in both challenging population denialism and also advocating for an eco centric worldview. Welcome to the studio.

    Helen Kopnina 4:16

    Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

    Nandita Bajaj 4:19

    And so you and your friend and colleague Hayden Washington had worked together for many years and have co authored several books and papers. We were looking forward to interviewing you both together today. And we're sad that won't happen. Hayden's death has come as somber news for all of us. It must have especially affected you. Would you please share a few words about your friendship with Hayden and your work together?

    Helen Kopnina 4:45

    Well, I felt I was ready for it. And today I'm having a low moment he died less than a week ago. I must say I've never met him in real life. Part of it is he was one of the rare people who walked his talk. So when He was speaking about environmental sustainability and certain actions that we should not be undertaking. Among those things were flights, international flights, considering the fact that he lived in Australia and me in Europe. He never flew, I never flew. He was also vegan. He basically followed his convictions like so many people that I know the ones that are my co authors, unfortunately, not myself. I'm less principled, perhaps we admired his principles. We admired his determination, and particularly his honesty, I think, what's the biggest loss for all of us is that he was one of the few people who did not want to waste words, he was talking about avoiding waffle avoiding political correctness. And just saying it as it is. This can be sad about perhaps many people, but perhaps not many in academia, she struggled sometimes to publish some of his work precisely because he didn't want to make compromises our last article that coincidentally came out I believe, at the beginning of last week. Yeah, it was a struggle, we lost, to be honest, quite a few co authors just because they couldn't deal with this. And sometimes I do it with my students, do I give them negative feedback? Before I give positive feedback, I must say that Hayden managed to alienate quite a few people, just by his brutal honesty, I found that difficult and struggled with it myself at times. Having said that, and it's interesting that you have selected a poem today, he was an incredibly gentle soul, he was a person with a huge and warm heart. And yeah, I must say, Well, I haven't prepared this speech at all. And the first thing that came up to my mind is water loss of a beautiful human being with such sensitivity for the natural world, including human beings. It has to be said every time that Hayden nor any of my co authors never see humans as outside of nature, and he loved all human beings to he just thought that we can do so much better living on this planet together. So what I'll miss the most is basically his uncompromising sense of justice and his brutal to the point of being rude at times, honesty,

    Nandita Bajaj 7:27

    those are really beautiful words, we will of course, be dedicating this episode to Hayden's memory. And we are so glad that you are here to speak on behalf of both your work and the work that you both did together. Thank you.

    Alan Ware 7:39

    So both of you and hadn't heard your whole professionalized strongly committed to an eco centric worldview. And you and Hayden both created a statement of commitment to eco centrism that's been signed by over 1000 people worldwide. As of now, how would you describe the Eco centric worldview? In general?

    Helen Kopnina 8:00

    Yeah, well, one of the things about the statement Yeah, I wish it would have generated as much enthusiasm as at present the World Cup does, having 1000 People sign a certain statement. That's nothing in comparison to millions and sometimes billions of people that are wrong, after one political ideology to the next, or subscribe to certain types of ethics. I think the statement itself is an important one. What's more important, and I think it was most important to Hayden is that it would reach beyond the compounds of whatever people have read it, but would be part of our worldview. And by our I mean worldview of millions and hopefully billions of people maybe in the past and going back to the origins of eco centrism that can be perhaps traced back to people like John muya, Leopold, and later, Arna pneus. It is a movement that has been connected to in many ways, let's say indigenous ideologies, and a movement that is definitely not new, perhaps having also to do with animistic religions having to do with origins of humanity, as indeed something that we can recognize has been so closely interlinked with other natural systems, and particularly other living beings, the idea because centuries must simply put not to place ourselves at the center of universe not to think of one single species as the only one that deserves in ethical terms, moral consideration, and in pragmatic terms that deserves a fair share to what we humans call natural resources or ecosystem services, because these are again very anthropocentric ways of relating to our environment and eco centrism very much does place humans within that system, not outside the system, but also partially It sees humans in pretty much natural and biological terms. pragmatically speaking, we can say we are large omnivores, or apex predators. And that's part of the issue. If there are a billion of us, something's got to give, as much as we love certain other types of iconic species such as tigers, if you imagine a billion of them walking around, we might have a problem, unless they're doing the same as us basically herding enormous amounts of other animals into small compounds, inject them with antibiotics, make them grow very quickly by forceful feeding, and consuming them and packaging them and selling them at cetera, et cetera. So egocentrism is about recognizing both the practical and pragmatic side of placing ourselves at the center of everything, which arguably has caused the problems, environmental problems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, etc, that we're having now two ethical terms which are clearly very deficient in terms of justice theory, even theory of let's say, democracy in which only one species seems to be responsible for all others, and making decisions on everybody else's behalf. So egocentrism, in this sense is also related to ecology centeredness, or birth centeredness. In some ways, it's intertwined with our own analysis, definitions of deep green ecology, and that would be the recognition of intrinsic value of nature or intrinsic value of nonhumans, as a defining principle of recognizing, indeed, something that exists outside of our interests, has always existed outside of our interests has been there before our interests, and in fact deserves, although we're humans, of course, and will remain humans but certainly deserves our understanding and appreciation of the fact that it's not just resources and services that we're talking about. So that's it in a nutshell.

    Alan Ware 12:06

    And how did you come to this more egocentric worldview, seeing that most people grew up very much paying attention to human social systems, very anthropocentric. And then modern, globalized, capitalist societies, it seems to take quite a bit of experience of some sort to create a more eco centric consciousness. What was your coming to that as you grew up,

    Helen Kopnina 12:31

    I did write an article once, which was a very personal one in the same journal that issued that ecocentric statement journals called ecological citizen. And the journal article was called egocentrism, a personal story, it lays out three personal experiences in my life. One was related to me growing up in the Soviet Union in the country, which is probably the worst country in the world right now. And I was born in Moscow. My father, especially it was a physicist who went out with his physicist friends and their families to the wilderness areas in Siberia, and rural in Karelia, etc. Those hikes with parents, it was a formative experience, in a sense that there was also a space for freedom for them being dissidents at the time being anti regime, it allowed them for certain freedom to actually speak openly to each other, it also allowed for a space that we then have in the city to think, or at least for them, I was a child, to think and to relate to certain issues that were bigger than themselves. One of the issues that was bigger than themselves, quite literally, from a child's point of view was the trees surrounding us and the lakes and the rivers and the kind of self sufficiency that we've developed because that's before the age of mobile phones and when you're hiking, so to speak, and actually using kayaks and canoes, in areas where there is no human civilization for six weeks at a time. Sometimes accidents can happen. Somebody can cut their knee with an axe while chopping wood, whatever you're on your own. There's no ambulance coming up. You have to fend for yourself that experience of survival. It wasn't the game. It wasn't some kind of Scout camp. It was something that I grew up with. And it was amazing. It was fascinating. It was quite extreme. Another experience was me going to the United States in 1989 when finally my mother immigrated with my little sister. And to make a very long story short, at a pretty young age. Being a teenager I ended up on the street in Phoenix, Arizona. We went from Moscow to Phoenix all the places and I thought that it might be a good idea still to continue going to school because it might otherwise eliminate my chances of getting anywhere. I started off living in the city center being one of those homeless teenager US and ceiling and worse the ones like myself have been if they were female, usually prostituting themselves and using drugs, etc. Coming from an intellectual Soviet family, I found this horrifying and I ended up moving close to my school while I was working full kind of silly little jobs selling burgers and god knows what else. And I spent more than a year in the bush living next to my school in a place called Paradise Valley close to the fruit of the Camelback Mountain. It was an interesting experience because while I was sleeping out of a backpack, and the nature surrounding me felt so much safer than downtown Phoenix and the whole sort of drug prostitution infested kind of scary world in which I thought I've reached the bottom but it felt like I could physically not exist anymore. It supported me it was nice and warm, Arizona being what it is, could stay there in the winter. I've spent quite some time writing my college applications from the bush surrounded by cacti and hummingbirds and all other beautiful things. A third one was related in India, I was doing Erasmus Mundus exchange program, and that was about 15 years ago, it meant that I went to teach from the University of Amsterdam where I was working on the time to each other for university in Kolkata. And I had a wonderful experience there, my family came as well and my daughter who was two and a half or three years old, Eden, she was there. The thing is my family members, they make trips outside of university campus compounds every single day and I stayed at the university because I had to teach so I spent many more times indoors and surrounded by beautiful trees and road which was very big, there were 17 lanes, slow moving traffic full of diesel lead, and other forms of exhaust stay the just outside of my compounds. So my family members within a few weeks, they've developed pretty bad case of a lung infection, disease, etc. We were recommended to go on a little trip after they've taken antibiotics. So we went to West Bengal to a place called Darjeeling. And we've traveled around a little bit in a place called Sundarbans. And that again, the healing power of nature when I saw my little daughter per cup, sit up and smile again. And the color coming back to her face. It wasn't just the mangrove forests, although that was beautiful, too. But yeah, the healing power of nature is one important thing. The freedom element of nature is another important thing. But another thing that I've written once it's called The Lorax complex. And there's a hypothesis that if you're exposed to nature early on, like I was with my parents, that you're predisposed to like it. Well, if you look at empirical evidence, that's not necessarily true. You can see people who grow up in the middle of mangrove forest or in the middle of Arizona, some kind of beautiful forest and flag stuff next to it and participating in its destruction through logging or whatever other activities or basically not caring about forest inhabitants. You also have cases described in a film called if a tree falls a story of the Earth Liberation Front, the so called radical environmentalist Danny McGowan, grows up in New York has never been hiking has never been outside of New York. Perhaps the greenest space he's visited was central park at some stage at the age of 20. He gets exposed to a documentary video about Indonesia, I believe, and forest felling there, centuries old trees realizes that in his own home state, Oregon old growth forest is being destroyed as we speak connects to certain people. And that's how the journey for defense of nature starts. In fact, I think perhaps you need to have both internal predisposition, I guess, certain kinds of openness, certain type of biophilia simply put liking animals can be your cats, dogs, maybe you can extrapolate from there to wild species, and indeed some exposure but it could be virtual exposure, it could be a story that you hear, it could be something that just plants the seed, I do believe that every human being is capable of this. I think we do need to have chances to be predisposed. I believe that education is one of the biggest tools to achieve that. And that's what Hayden's work and the work of my other co authors and myself is also very much geared towards education towards sustainability education towards egocentrism, and recognizing non human species as more or less significant. So hope that answers your question.

    Nandita Bajaj 19:50

    Yeah, you did a really nice job taking us through this incredible journey from your growing up as a child in nature and then experiencing all of this hardship, how you found nature to be a healer, both for yourself when you were living in Phoenix, but then also for your daughter in these kind of mountainous areas and the forests of India's wilderness. Those are really beautiful and moving examples. And I wanted to say also what you just said about the Lorax paradox, the fact that you found that it's not required that you have experience in nature to be predisposed to liking it. It certainly lines up with my own experience. I grew up in very urbanized environments in India, no exposure to nature, except for a couple of times during the year when we would go and visit a mountainous area or some park for a vacation. But for the most part, it was completely absent from my worldview. And it really wasn't until my late 30s, a few years ago that I started waking up to it. And it came from a place of empathy that started with our own companion animal and her death, and what that meant for us to really reconsider what it means for us to have that same capacity for love and empathy towards those animals with whom we didn't have a relationship. So that was a really incredible period where this care for one suddenly extrapolated to this care for the whole. And then started this experience of embodying more of an eco centric worldview, which for us population balance, it's one of our pillars, that you know, we are waking up to it. And Alan is taking a course.

    Alan Ware 21:41

    Yeah, it's a Minnesota naturalist course. So looking at the flora and fauna of this state of this bio region. And I've gotten more interested in bio regionalism, which Dana Meadows had mentioned in 1983, was probably the only viable long term future for humanity would be a more bio regional type of way of making our living without destroying the planet. So that's been a interesting exploration to go deeper on the real local elements. And yet, the daily rewards paying your bills, there's so much of a pole to all of the human systems that it becomes a hobby, I don't have to really learn how to fish. Well, to eat, I can go to the grocery store, I don't really have to learn how to make clothing, I can buy it. I mean, I'm glad that I don't have to learn all that. But it can make it quite divorced from your everyday life. So it's hard to know sometimes how to really integrate it in a way.

    Nandita Bajaj 22:43

    And yet here we are in our 40s and 50s, waking up to a new worldview, basically reinforcing that point that even if you have had no exposure to it, we're always in flux. And we can actually change you know, our feelings and behaviors and attitudes towards this kind of a worldview the same way we've been taught a different worldview.

    Alan Ware 23:03

    Yeah, partly learning about woodpeckers needing rotten trees. And if you want all your trees to be pretty, and to not have anything dying or dead, you have to get rid of those trees. And then there are no woodpeckers and the woodpeckers make holes that all these other birds and animals use mink weasel. So if you get rid of dead and dying stuff, to make it pretty in park, like you're going to get rid of a lot of species diversity. So that ignorance that we walk around with and don't appreciate the complexity of what's going on around us that's been enjoyable to get rid of to get more enlightened over time.

    Helen Kopnina 23:41

    And by the way, this the same Daniela meadows that publicize limits to growth,

    Alan Ware 23:46

    right, in the Great thinking and systems primer.

    Helen Kopnina 23:50

    By the way, it was Hayden, who collected essays on personal statements on egocentrism, he collected about 12 of them from leading biologists, philosophers, etc. So it's really worth looking into that particular issue of ecological citizen published in 2017. And there you have what you just told me about domestic dogs, cats, that kind of entry level, some kind of favorite pets. That was the story that was quite consistent, by the way, coming out of many accounts.

    Nandita Bajaj 24:23

    And so you and Hayden both have been proponents of eco justice. How do you describe the concept of eco justice?

    Helen Kopnina 24:34

    Well, we have the conventional types of justice. We have distributive justice, representational justice, I think, most significant idea about so called ecological justice. So there were a few authors writing about it. Brian Baxter, I think he writes about it from political science point of view, looking at existing theories of justice within the human Obviously anthropocentric, but nonetheless familiar domain. And then there are actually quite a few publications coming out now with the title, environmental and ecological justice. Now we have to be very careful because the term environmental justice is actually used in pretty much all the cases except for David Schloss Burke's formulation to designate social justice. Basically, environmental justice is about justice and distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. So benefits would be things like, again, ecological services, resources, etc. And burdens would be things like pollution, climate change, etc. And also the idea of environmental racism, for example, that the poor, the members of certain social classes, or race, or gender, or underprivileged, and basically get the shortest end of the stick that in itself, I think it's a very wide disgust phenomenon, especially in terms of climate justice in our recent CLP 27. Summit. It was all about that. And I think there's nothing too new about that. I mean, obviously, this is something I, myself and Hayden, very much so to, and I think pretty much everybody I know. And I'm friends with support, social justice, full stop. But I think what's very different about the idea of ecological justice, it's, there's a difference between interspecies and intraspecies. So it's also it's quite ironic, because somehow proponents of social justice and so called Environmental Justice think that somehow if we solve those social issues, somehow miraculously, justice between species might be also addressed. And I personally don't see any empirical evidence for that necessarily, we're talking about a certain economic pie, which is limited back to Meadows report and the limits to growth, whether you divide it equally or not. So you have one huge chunk that's taken by let's say, 1%, the richest people in the world, the 99%, is doing by teeny tiny slices, or let's say it's divided by 20 80%, whatever, we're still talking about one pie. So having come from the Soviet Union, there was a forceful system of distribution. That's another very common critique that you hear critique of capitalism. Well, I grew up with socialism, and it wasn't any different. Because basically, you have, okay, division is in the same slices, you still pollute nature, you still use it as a source of natural resources, economic growth is still very much favored industrial development, and I think that's very significant is still very much central to it, there is no difference. One of the things that Hayden with his very uncompromising and maybe unguarded sense of honesty was talking about, I think, just like all of us, he was a liberal leftist. So in a sense, I mean, we also have to be very careful not to sound like we are attacking things like a walk, identity, politics, or any of this, but the kind of reliance on those repeated truths. Let's blame capitalism, let's blame the white toxic masculinity, at cetera, et cetera. Just somehow, miraculously, this is going to solve our environmental problems, or let's say it's the consuming elites in Western countries, and not those poor people that have a lot of children elsewhere. A very famous and popular and much admired environmental journalist of the Guardian, George Monbiot said it that basically talking about population is racist just because of it. And here, indeed, we arrive at this very uncomfortable politically incorrect question, is it really so and also considering the fact that we want all people to have justice to be able to consume as much as we do, and the poor don't consume less? Because they don't want to necessarily, perhaps because they can't, right? I think this is quite an uncomfortable thing indeed about the whole discussion of population as well

    Nandita Bajaj 29:16

    inspired quite heavily by the papers that you and Hayden wrote on population denialism. We recently came out with our own paper on pronatal, ism, and population denialism really fuel a lot of not just ecological injustice, but also reproductive and social injustice. And people who claim that talking about population is racist or anti poor in some way, are basically as you just said, assuming that people in high fertility countries or people where the status of women is really low, are voluntarily wanting to have large families and voluntary wanting to live with low carbon or ecological footprints. So by closing the door on the population connection, you are carrying the water for the patriarchs who benefit from the subjugation of women and the subjugation of poor people. And as you said, the elite minority that benefits from marginalizing the majority. So it's a really sad and ridiculous argument that is happening more and more on the left. And I think it's become very counterproductive to the very social justice goals that the left like us are fighting for. Yeah, I

    Helen Kopnina 30:41

    very much do think so. And to make an argument that somebody of 12 years old voluntarily wants to have these children and an age of 18 have three of them, and also that it makes the family in question somehow richer or happier that just proportionate? I think so the low hanging fruit in this case, and indeed, a win win for social justice advocates. And also looking at the issue from an environmental angle is very much to look at it also from the point of view of what actually makes people poor and what actually makes people happy and what actually makes people choose certain things and not choose certain things. And I think in that regard, we should not be witnessing the kind of polarization that now occurs with this type of discourse that George Monbiot article has certainly underscored But indeed, to me, before I read this article, I wasn't even aware of the huge sort of ideological gulf that exists to this degree. And I thought it should be such a common sensical thing, indeed, all the cries for some kind of Neo Malthusian eugenics. That's just insane. Nobody's saying that we're talking about unwanted pregnancies very much. So we're talking about parents that do not feel that they can really support their children do not want them at the moment of conception, so to speak. Oftentimes, this is a complete perversion of reality, at least the way that Hayden and myself and our co author see it.

    Nandita Bajaj 32:17

    And we do as well.

    Alan Ware 32:19

    And like you mentioned, if the global footprint is 1.7 Earths, and it's divided very unequally, which is unfair, and should be changed. But even if it were all divided fairly, we're still using 1.7 Earth. So there's still that ecological element that you're mentioning that if you just push on social justice, that will not take care of it, you can evenly divide everything that we're consuming now. And we will still be consuming 1.7 ers.

    Nandita Bajaj 32:47

    And we've also seen from the same source, the Global Footprint Network, the sustainable development index shows that as countries move toward better access to resources, and lower fertility and more economic empowerment, their footprint skyrockets, because as Helen, you were just saying people do not voluntarily wish to live as poor people with really, really miniscule ecological footprints in substandard living conditions. So again, from the social justice principles, as we are trying to move more and more people into these higher access kind of lifestyles, inevitably, the footprint is going to go higher. And yet our governments and our systems that are really growth biased, they're not showing any signs of moving towards the degrowth society, and more and more countries are wanting to move in that direction. So we're basically seeing the degradation of not just ecological justice, we're seeing degradation of social justice increasingly,

    Helen Kopnina 33:52

    yeah. And then again, look at somebody like Hayden, I started talking about him as somebody who walked his talk. He is one of those exceptional people, mind you, a white male living in Australia, meaning not the country that his ancestors came from, not exactly indigenous, and yet be vegan, not flying airplanes, choosing not to have children at cetera, et cetera, how self sacrificial in fact, can one be so he, to me also serves as a living example. But basically, yeah, when I hear about all those overconsuming Western elites, and I'm looking at my own friends, and basically co author circle, and what I see is a lot of people like Hayden did try to reduce their own footprint to pretty much miniscule proportions in and I also look at individuals that aspire to higher better lifestyles, who can blame them, which is pretty much probably the rest of the world. And yeah, there's an irony in that to trying to sell degrowth to most people in In the Western world, but try to sell it in aspiring economies, so to speak in the developing world. And we have that here in class because I teach classes for students from Nigeria, from students from Ghana, India and Bangladesh, former British colonies, a lot of students in our master's program, 800 of them when I mentioned degrowth, and we just had a small talk about it, and the way they looked at me, and I really felt that I needed to take a little bit of time to explain what I meant by it, but then they kept looking at me, this is crazy, insane. We don't think like that. This is not gonna sound we're really laughing. But it just makes you think about the scale of this integrated idea that we got in our heads these days, that industrial development, economic growth as such, this is the only good way to live. Yeah. And it's internalized everywhere. That in itself, I think is quite scary. Indeed.

    Nandita Bajaj 35:59

    I heard you in another podcast, calling it the global brainwash that the romantic ideas we have about certain communities and countries about how harmoniously they live with nature have all been kind of usurped by this economic growth, capitalistic, individualistic mindset, where even in really privileged circles within India, people that I know and these are middle class consumers probably consuming at similar levels to us have bought into this trope that it's their turn, it's now everyone else's turn to degrade nature and to dominate and to colonize nature, because everyone else has been doing it for so long. And in some ways, you understand the justification of it. It's like, yes, the Western countries have been and have had a history of colonizing both other countries, but also nature and setting examples for other countries. But at the same time, is following in the footsteps of something horrendous the right way to create a justice framework? No,

    Helen Kopnina 37:12

    you would expect some kind of leapfrogging actually saying okay, well, you guys have made such a massive mistake. And it's so dumb and stupid. And we're just going to step over it and actually start with something else ecological foundations, as ironically too. That's the thing about India that I found so fascinating that historically speaking about Hinduism, and Buddhism, and indeed, vegetarian diets, it's almost stereotypical. But it's also completely an entirely true empirically speaking, just looking at the consumption numbers from 1950s and 60s onwards, you just see certain trends change in kind of modern Western lifestyle entering, and indeed the abandonment of something that used to be a part of an entire society widely shared, respect and love for animals to just name one thing,

    Nandita Bajaj 38:09

    right? One of the things we talked about is this frustration you've had with a lot of well intentioned people around the world, that the movement for ecological justice, which recognizes the rights of non human living creatures and ecosystems, will have to wait its turn until social justice within the human species is achieved. And you've spoken to it already a bit. And I wanted to see if you've seen any examples of communities or people who are starting to engage in kind of this interconnected justice framework, the kind that you are putting forth the ecological justice framework, which includes social justice,

    Helen Kopnina 38:53

    I think there are many examples across the world of that are mostly their small scale. And just like in the discussion of which individuals or communities are predisposed towards egocentrism, I think it takes both the opportunity and very much the kind of structural limitations or opportunities again, part of it is that there are certain legislative steps such as Ecocide law, for example, that very much help, especially in places where they are really already implemented, or things like precautionary a law in environmental politics. That's a very widespread one, also operating here in Great Britain and in the EU countries as well. What we also see is there's this whole movement towards the rights of natures. So Ecuador is a wonderful example of that. Well, that actually is a very twisted question, of course, because what do these rights entail? So certain reverse given rights or another parallel discussion is about sentience. So sentient beings and what are those sentient beings and which ones should be given more consideration. It does get kind of complicated though, because indeed, it's a very fragmented field. And when we speak about Wangari River as my other co author, the rolling constraint argues in the case of New Zealand community, you do see communities very much supporting the river, so to speak, sometimes very similar way that they used to in the past, simply not polluting it not permitting certain practices, et cetera. But how is it different from really doing what they've always done or doing what actually modern legislative systems can do protect an entity by pretty much punishing whoever is polluting or doing whatever against it, I think, to my example, earlier on off a white western male living in a country, which is not a country of his ancestors, so definitely not indigenous, such as Hayden Washington, and yet having a footprint that probably equals to a footprint of anybody in developing country, or maybe less, because he doesn't eat meat, even she's dog Tinky, I believe was having a vegetarian diet. But yeah, there we have basically a hidden part of his own little community. And then you have people here and you have people there, and you have lots of individuals in Cambodia that fight for the rights of whatever group of it could be elephants, for example. And I think the picture is really, truly global. So when I was talking about the Lorax, complex, a second article, follow up article I've written is called the Lorex complex and cross cultural perspective, arguing that indeed, it's not just a community here, and there, there is no brilliant example because things also keep shifting and changing. But within each and every single community, and indeed, it cross cuts, gender, it cross cuts, age, it cross cuts, ethnicity, race, etc. And that's the beauty of it. Because whenever you support something, and also even in my classes, that some of them are elective courses, so students choose to be in a sustainability class. And yeah, you do see all different backgrounds. And somehow they're just attracted to this idea. And it's wonderful to see. And again, growing up next to a forest doesn't mean anything, because you have defenders of the forest from the same village saying, please do not cut the tree and their neighbor or family member is cutting the tree. So that happens to very much with Patchwork, I think,

    Nandita Bajaj 42:38

    yeah, it makes sense. And we've started to notice this shift also in some of the areas, especially when it comes to the protection of non human animals and animal rights. We're seeing this understanding that the powers of oppression that derive benefit from the domination of non human animals in nature, are also the same powers that exploit humans. And so you know, this siloed approach to fighting for justice can slow down the progress that we would make if we could actually take on the larger systems that are responsible for the oppression. And we've seen work by these academics and activists like Sinara, Taylor, she authored the book, beasts of burden. So she's a disabled person, and an animal rights activist. And basically, her work is challenging us to think deeply about the things that divide the human from the non human, animal and the disabled from the non disabled, and what it means to break down those divisions. So she's kind of doing disability rights and animal rights, in the same way as what you were just talking about. And then there's also this book called Afro ism, essays on pop culture, feminism and black veganism from two sisters. And the authors are F and Silko. And they're trying to bridge the gap between anti black racism, feminism and non human animal discrimination, trying to look at these interconnected oppressions. And I think those are some really excellent examples of ways forward for how we can actually start taking on larger systems that oppress across species across race, across gender across ability, and there's more power to the movement when we can unite our

    Helen Kopnina 44:29

    efforts. Definitely, definitely. So

    Nandita Bajaj 44:33

    Helen, we were telling you that we just came out with our new peer reviewed paper that was authored by myself and our communications manager Kirsten stayed, and it's called challenging pronatal ism is key to advancing reproductive rights and a sustainable population. And both your and Hayden's writing on population denialism informed much of our thinking for that paper. And so, one of the themes of course in population denialism is that there's been a shift from talking about population growth as a concern to exclusively focusing on women's reproductive health. And so as a result, fewer people are talking about population or even family planning, because, as you found, while this shift was a positive step toward increased reproductive autonomy, it also brought about this silencing of the population connection, and that followed directly after the 1994 un Cairo Conference on Population and Development. you've discussed that critics often portray overpopulation concerns as being anti poor, anti developing country or even anti human. Can you talk a bit about what you found to be the reasons behind this denialism?

    Helen Kopnina 45:55

    Well, first of all, I must say, population is not really my specialty, it is one of the issues that we discussed. I mean, most of my work centers around environmental education, for example. And generally, I would say even pedagogical studies, curriculum studies, looking at certain transformations within sustainability as a whole. I did come across the question of population, obviously, when I was starting to get more and more academically involved in the issue of sustainability, slowly but surely, I've progressed to see it in my kind of rear view window and still kind of trying to move forward. I think it was one of those discussions I've once had. That threw me back quite a bit. Because to me, in my naive days, it was just one of those assumed truths that Yeah, well, there are a lot of us on this planet, we all eat and drink and create certain problems in a very simplistic way, I guess. And then indeed, this whole discussion started about No, not all of us eat the same amount and many more, consume much more. And actually, I should not be even talking about it. Because, yeah, it sounds kind of privileged. Again, you know, the funny thing about privilege, it's very ahistorical. I think, too, because I mean, if you look at my own origin country, nobody was colonizing anybody, we were pretty much killing each other. That's what's happening now, with Russia and Ukraine. Unfortunately, there was serfdom, in which most people did not not own their own land. But they did not even own themselves basically serfs in a feudal system, horrible history of lots of blood. But basically, at least in the Russian region, for generations, it was blood spilled on more or less its own vast territory, without getting involved. My own history, you know, being a child of immigrant parents starting, as my mother used to say, and she never remembers, was it $49 or $99 that we had in our pocket when we landed in New York for the first time, and then Phoenix, starting from scratch my stepfather, who was one of those people that committed suicide coming from Bulgaria, overshadowed by all kinds of horrendous things that happened in his own history in his own country, not much privileged about and growing up on the street the way I did, too. And that was in that discussion that came up, but held you from Cambridge. And that just ended the whole discussion. And I remember that the discussion started with population, and then just cutting me off because I went to this elitist school. And by the way, you know, going through the trajectory of it, and basically getting a scholarship that had never had money at that stage at all. Anyway, so long story, but I really felt personally misunderstood, I guess, and it made me examine the whole issue going back, how did this turn out so ugly? This whole discussion? And like, what kind of pigeonholing is this and I think from that very personal perspective of it felt like I'm being blamed for being who I am and or perceived who I am. And again, you know, if you look at me and I look white, and if you look in my DNA, you might find fascinating things too. But anyways, why does the discussion of population trigger such strange response and this is not just one incidence later on, of course, with George Monbiot, etc, you just start to realize things on your send certain article drafts to journals, and you get rejected on the basis of the fact that you're talking about population because that is happening, especially in anthropology journals, political ecology journals. I think part of it might be in a sense, it comes from a good place. Ace, again, kind of a social sensitivities, the part of wokeness that I myself very much support, because once again, I'm very much against all kinds of injustices just like all of us, I suppose. Yeah, I think there's a kind of mixture of motives and a kind of evolution of our thinking from 1970s. When indeed gone back to meadows and the limits to growth, it was very normal to speak about population, while I believe in 1970s, what was it 4 billion, right? And suddenly, it becomes Neo Malthusian racist, etc, talk about it. I think it's really quite a few of those little butterfly effects, some of them societal, some of them academic, some of them, whatever upset the balance of seeing this as an issue. I do find this outrageous that you mentioned somehow, people would think that you're talking about coercion, eugenics, or racism, as in this is just the kind of thing that I'm afraid that's how our conversation started with some things that might not be politically correct. And some things that Hayden was very much fighting against, why can't we have a rational discussion about it? Yeah, I think the kind of stubborn insistence that some members of academic circles and especially within my own original field of anthropology, we just don't touch these issues. But how about indeed talking about all of us, all of us need to grow, all of us need to take responsibility and also see ourselves as part of one single species. There was another interesting talk, I was invited to the beginning of the year, and it was about colonialism, race, and speciesism. And then somehow, also, when I said that, but aren't we all part of the same species, even that provoked a certain controversy? And I don't want to go into it. But again, I'm really starting to feel that I'm walking on eggshells, just discussing these issues, you know,

    Nandita Bajaj 52:03

    yeah, no, we totally got it. It's become like an ideology, especially across academia, it just feels like the conversation has lost the academic integrity, to be able to talk about issues openly and rationally debate them. But when the conversation is suddenly stopped, and you're told that you're not even allowed to broach the subject, then it's the silencing of discourse that isn't very, very unhealthy. It's a unhealthy message to be sending students. And it's not really helping the causes, that those who are silencing the discourse actually are purporting to support, right. It's actually degrading those causes. But in some ironic way, it makes you look a little more superior by silencing the conversation. And you say it's coming from a good place. I mean, we're all coming from the same place of concern for justice. But it is frustrating to be misunderstood and mis portrayed in culture, especially people with people we consider the strongest allies of justice.

    Helen Kopnina 53:10

    Yeah. And I guess without taking things personally, because it is very much about the movement and about the ideology, etc. The kind of labeling and pigeonholing and witch hunt that is going on, all the arguments get totally misconstrued. And as soon as the label comes on, that stops every kind of discussion whatsoever.

    Nandita Bajaj 53:35

    Right, Helen, thank you so much. This was such a fascinating and enlightening conversation and your personal story and your academic journey and what you're doing with your students. It's just so incredible to hear how many different hats you wear, and you're making changes in your own ways. And also, thank you so much for speaking on behalf of Hayden and honoring all of the work that he's brought to our movement. We really appreciate having you here today.

    Alan Ware 54:05

    Yeah. Thank you.

    Helen Kopnina 54:07

    Thank you so much for this opportunity. And I do hope that I'm channeling a little bit of his anger and frustration as well, in a sense, I'm doing it intentionally, because I know you've spoken the same way. In a sense, he was very brief to

    Nandita Bajaj 54:21

    definitely.

    Helen Kopnina 54:22

    And yeah, I do think indeed, if you include his poem, one of the things is that through his poetry, which is much less known, perhaps that his academic activism, by a lot of love of everything, including humanity comes through it. He said that if he could save just one single species by dying himself, he would do at any moment, and I'm sad to see that the week that he died just the day before I actually placed something on Twitter about a certain mountain mist frog quite coincidentally and Australian species that was declared extinct And yeah, I just think that because of his life and his work, he might just succeed in saving perhaps more than one species. So let's hope so.

    Alan Ware 55:11

    Well that's it for this edition of the Overpopulation Podcast. Visit populationbalance.org to learn more, and to share feedback or guest recommendation, write to us using the contact form on our site, or by emailing us at podcast@ populationbalance.org. If you feel inspired by our work, please consider supporting us using the donate button. Also, to help expand our listenership, please consider rating us on whichever podcast platform you use.

    Nandita Bajaj 55:41

    Until next time, I'm Nandita Bajaj, thanking you for your interest in our work and for all of your efforts in helping us all shrink toward abundance.

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