PUBLICATIONS
Publications
Our publications feature a combination of our own writing and pieces from changemakers who are working in the area of sustainable population advocacy from a justice-oriented framework for people, animals, and the planet.
WITNESS: Tales from the Sargasso Sea
Growing up in Athens, Greece I remember vividly the fascination my high school classmates and I shared about “the Bermuda Triangle.” In hushed tones we spoke about this mysterious remote region where ships and airplanes—if they made the grave error of wandering into or over it—would disappear.
Eat, Pray, Pollute
In Barcelona and beyond, people are rising up against a tourism industry that strains infrastructures, commodifies culture and destroys ecosystems.
A re-commitment to reproductive autonomy and responsibility will help secure a socially just and ecologically sustainable future
While the elevation of reproductive rights [at the 1994 Cairo Conference] appeared commendable, its shift away from demographic and ecological issues has been calamitous and has undermined many of its own social and reproductive justice goals.
Population: The fear of limiting people and our things
Here’s a question almost no one wants to talk about: What is the sustainable size of the human population, at what level of aggregate consumption? Why are so many people afraid to discuss something so essential?
Human-Carbon Nature
Who’s to blame for climate destabilization and the many other ecological crises driving us toward collapse? Looking for the villains in the story is understandable, given the depth of human suffering and the extent of environmental destruction.
Logging is destroying southern forests — and dividing U.S. environmentalists
More than 150 conservation, environmental, and social justice organizations have accused The Nature Conservancy of “promoting false climate solutions.”
Choosing a planet of life
One of the commonplaces of environmental writing these days is a population forecast of 10 billion (or more) people by century’s end. Indeed, this projection is endlessly repeated, as if it were as inevitable as the calculable trajectory of an asteroid hurtling through space.
Overshoot and the incredible shrinking planet
Let’s start with a thought experiment. Suppose you and your close family and friends, perhaps 150 people in all, were confined to an isolated island – let’s call it Esperanza – characterized by landscapes and soils that were representative of average arable land in the United States and that, henceforth, you would have to be food self-sufficient – you have no access to trade goods.
“Green growth” and population denial doom our climate efforts
As the warmest year on record draws to a close, delegates from around the world just reached agreement, after 30 years of meeting on climate change, to transition away from fossil fuels. The legally nonbinding consensus to shift to renewable energy technologies came after delegates arrived via private jet in Dubai, the capital of one of the largest oil producing nations…
The fallacy of endless economic growth: What economists around the world get wrong about the future
The idea that economic growth can continue forever on a finite planet is the unifying faith of industrial civilization. That it is nonsensical in the extreme, a deluded fantasy, doesn't appear to bother us.
Reproductive autonomy is fundamental to conservation
Overconsumption has brought us the climate crisis, the Sixth Great Extinction, expanding desertification, and the depletion of fresh water supplies across the globe. But it is humans, at this point eight billion of us, who are doing that consuming. It should not be controversial that our profound state of ecological overshoot is a product of both our population and our consumption.
Holidays: A chance to dig deeper for kinship and meaning
Most of my waking hours are dedicated to spreading awareness about the pervasiveness and oppressiveness of pronatalism, which is the social bias towards biological children.
The left’s population denialism
There is an unfortunate trend among some of our allies on the Left of denying the relevance of our growing human population to the mounting environmental crises that pose an existential threat to our species and most others on Earth.
Pope Francis’ not-so-divine intervention
Pope Francis’ recent comments calling those who are choosing to forego procreation to be selfish fly in the face of our fight for social, reproductive, and ecological justice.
We need to talk about overpopulation
Nandita, you have become committed to exploring the impacts of pronatalism and have been embedding the issue of human population growth ever more deeply into humane education. What inspired you to devote so much thought and time to this particular issue?