The folks at Population Balance have a lot of resources on the fundamental issue facing humans, every other species and the planet itself.
While it is no longer ‘acceptable’ within the environmental community and society at large to mention the obvious elephant in the room, human population driving every problem we face, Population Balance is not afraid to buck this ‘head in the sand’ politeness.
They have a biweekly podcast that features a wide range of experts.
Some recent highlights are:
- Christopher Ketcham – The Megamachine and Green Growth Delusions In this interview with freelance writer Christopher Ketcham, we unpack the techno-industrial extractivism — through public lands grazing, mining, and drilling — that plagues modern societies, and the media’s and government’s complicity in failing to challenge the growth model on which it is based.
- Alan Weisman – Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? In this episode with award-winning author and journalist Alan Weisman, we discuss his book Countdown capturing his journey to over 20 countries over five continents to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth, and also the hardest. How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing?
- Dr. Émile Torres – Highway to Hell: The Dystopian Fantasies of Tech Billionaires In this episode, we chat with philosopher and historian Dr. Émile Torres about the dystopian fantasies of ecologically blind tech billionaires — transhumanists, longtermists, and effective altruists — of defying nature, transcending humanity, and colonizing the universe.
- James Hopeward – The Delusion of Decoupling Economic Growth from Environmental Impact Dr. James Hopeward, an environmental civil engineering professor at the University of South Australia, highlights the limitations of conventional economic growth models and their environmental impacts, emphasizing the need for more holistic and ecologically grounded engineering practices (and cultural beliefs).
- William Rees – Confronting Overshoot: Changing the Story of Human Exceptionalism We chat with population ecologist, originator of “ecological footprint”, and one of the world’s best big-picture ecological thinkers, Dr. Bill Rees. Bill explains how our blind faith in human exceptionalism, technological optimism, and neoliberal economics fooled us into disregarding ecological limits and brought us into a state of extreme overshoot. How can we confront this reality, in which we are degrading the biophysical basis of existence, to prepare for a post-industrial world?
- Paul Ehrlich – Sawing off the Limb on Which We are Perched Co/author of over 40 books, including the best-selling book The Population Bomb, Dr. Paul Ehrlich gives us a 50,000-ft view of humanity’s evolution over 300,000 years and the misunderstood and manufactured “normal” that currently defines us.
And these are just a few in the excellent series.
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