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.
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.
“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…
Making holidays happier and more humane
For many of us, the holidays are a chance to get together with our human and companion animal family and catch up on much-needed rest. In the global North, despite the melancholic embrace of chilly nights and short days, we know that winter has its own place and the wheel of the year its own logic - that many of the seeds fallen from their stalks in late summer must weather a frost to sprout again the following spring.
Why I am not going to consult AI
"AI can help writers save time, reduce costs, overcome creative obstacles, and produce diverse and original content for different channels and audiences." - Linked-In advice, regarding the usefulness of AI for writers
No thanks. In the words of Bartleby, The Scrivener, written by Herman Melville with neither computer nor AI, I would prefer not to.
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.
Family life in a nature-loving world
My wife and I are part of a large family. We have no children, no pets, but all the kin in the world. You, too, are part of this bonded group. It is true that we will never know the identity of the last common ancestor that you and I share with the old lady down my road, the birds in the back garden, the worms in the compost pile, the bacteria in my stomach, your stomach, and the deep sea, and all our other living relatives…
You’ve got to be carefully taught
This was yet another piercingly honest exposé of our human supremacist worldview by Dr. Crist. As Crist points out, human supremacy exists as a background assumption that gives us permission to use, abuse, torture, and kill animals for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, and so much more, as we deem fit.
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.
Broken mirror
The real way forward, away from suffering and toward hope, lies in denouncing the root cause of our predicament, the human-supremacy story, the destructive platitude of human specialness.
Earthling (We/Us)
Earth keepers call out to one and all to opt out of the sociocultural identity game, to choose freedom from anthropocentric herd costumes that furnish simulacra of reality for a sleepwalking, and now moribund, existence.
Something wicked this way comes: The menace of deep-sea mining
A new chapter of Earth pillage is in the works: the commercial venture of deep-sea mining. The deep sea lies 200 meters below sea level into the abyssal depths and comprises roughly 65 percent of Earth’s surface. It is being encroached by a nexus of nation-states and industries slavering over its “mind-boggling quantities of untapped resources”.
The environment & animals don't care about our discomfort with these topics
At a time when our collective human footprint is wreaking havoc on the planet, the fact that humanity is choosing to still feed itself with a diet that includes animal products is exacerbating and multiplying our damaging impact, with animal agriculture being a leading driver of biodiversity loss, deforestation, water use and water pollution.
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.
Shutter the factory farms
The othering of animals marks a watershed in the invention of “the human” qua superior, entitled, and invested with absolute power over nonhumans. Human supremacy did not so much need to pit itself against trees, rivers, or mushrooms.
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?