The world is overpopulated.
Overpopulation is everywhere.
It is a major cause of most of the crises we face.
We can fix it…humanely, voluntarily, and starting today.

Six things stand in our way.

This week a few human rights and too few environmental organizations will observe World Population Day. In 1989, as world population passed the 5 billion mark, the United Nations declared July 11 World Population Day. In the 23 years since, we’ve added another 2 billion.

The UN’s latest mid-range scenario has us passing through 10 billion before this century ends. We’ve been adding a billion to the planet about every 12 years, but the UN expects fertility rates to decline such that it will take nearly 80 years to add the next 3 billion. This scenario also has us hitting peak population just after 2100. Some feel this means population growth is no longer a concern.

I’m as worried about population growth today as I was when I decided twenty years ago to stop at two children. Why? Today alone we’ll add more than 200,000 to the planet. This week we’ll add more than a million – over 80 million this year. Yet according to data from the Global Footprint Network, published in the WWF’s Living Planet Report, the current 7 billion of us are living like there’s no tomorrow. We’re pushing other species off the planet at a record rate, draining the world’s major rivers and pumping aquifers dry, liquidating fertile soils, toxifying our land and waters, and heating up our climate.

We’re doing this while half the world’s population lives at a lifestyle we’d consider impoverished. We’d like all the people on the planet to have an opportunity to live like we do. Unfortunately that’s just not possible. The scientists crunching the data tell us it would take 5 Earths to support all 7 billion of us living like North Americans. Even if we could pull this off for a day or a week, it’s not sustainable and we’d very quickly destroy the life support systems upon which we depend.

So it’s a sticky wicket at 7 billion, and the problem is amplified if we go to 10. Clearly those of us living materially rich lives need to scale back our levels of consumption. But that is not enough. The prospects of achieving worldwide economic justice and equity do not get better as we overpopulate the planet.

The good news is we don’t have to follow that UN scenario. It’s not inevitable. It is physically possible for population to peak at 8 billion or even less. Families the world over can begin today making informed, responsible decisions about family size. What stands in the way?

1. The myth that growth begets prosperity – We are convinced our recent 200-year binge (harnessing the power of fossil fuels, industrialization, globalization, settling and exploiting the frontiers of the Americas, etc.) is the way life is supposed to be. These exploits allowed us to improve our lives, and they were accompanied by explosive population growth (1 billion in 1800, 8 billion in 2000). We think we can repeat this binge behavior going forward. In fact, many of us believe we must. The evidence and the science tell us clearly we cannot. We can take power away from this mythology by pointing it out whenever it is repeated or used to guide behavior or policy. We must be relentless in demolishing this myth.

2. The assumption continued population growth is inevitable – Many also have the impression it would take decades to change that steep upward trajectory. But all the talk about demographic momentum assumes people of reproductive age will not dramatically alter the choices they make. We can get over this hurdle. It just takes a little information. Growth can stop 9 months from now if it’s enough of a priority.

3. Our fear of addressing the issue - The “population taboo” has many forms. We think it’s an inalienable right to reproduce as many offspring as we wish. It’s none of our business to suggest someone else limit family size. Some critics leap to the conclusion that sustainable population advocates in the developed world are trying to avoid addressing our overconsumption and blame humankind’s unsustainability on the procreation of people in the developing world.

For these and other reasons many good people avoid the topic. It’s become politically incorrect to use the word “overpopulation.” “Population dynamics” has replaced “population growth.” “Reproductive health” is mentioned instead of “contraception.” We see it at the UN and in statements from environmental and human rights groups. This PC approach to the topic pervades most of our media.

Perfect examples are statements from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From an early World Population Day 2012 message:

“A world of 7 billion is both a challenge and an opportunity with implications on sustainability, urbanization, access to health services and youth empowerment.”

A challenge and an “opportunity?” Give me a break! And from his actual World Population Day 2012 statement:

“Multiple crises — food, fuel and financial — have caused significant suffering and served as a wake-up call about the need to pay far more attention to the building blocks of sustainable development.  Reproductive health is an indispensable part of the sustainable development equation.”

That’s the best he can muster. In his defense, he does go on to actually use the word “contraceptives.” That in itself is astounding progress. But he does not have the cojones to tell the full truth. Here is what he ought to say (my words now):

“The world is overpopulated. We must find humane, voluntary ways to bring population growth to a halt as soon as is humanly possible. And we need to do this in the developed world as much as in the developing world.”

This is a tough beast to tame, but I’m going to suggest the George Carlin approach. Let’s get over our goody-two-shoes fear of the truth. Stop beating around the bush. Use the words. Our planet is overpopulated. Population growth is not good for our children. It would be in their best interest for us to conceive fewer of them. You can say it! It’s the compassionate, loving, humanitarian thing to say. If we say it and write it enough, world leaders may follow (the irony is not lost on me).

Let’s also admit the developed world is overconsuming and we must deal with that issue simultaneously. And if we’re overconsuming, that means we North Americans and Australians have a population problem, too (Europeans not so much; many of these nations are experiencing population decline – which they should embrace with joy).

4. Our culture is addicted to growth - Our cities, states and nations compete to have the fastest growth. We pursue population growth because we connect it with economic growth, which is of course the Holy Grail (and a subject for another day). It’s impossible to have a sustainable world in which most of the geopolitical units are pursuing growth. Frankly, it can feed a hypocrisy in which rich cities and countries increase population and footprint, while thinking birth control for poor peoples and nations will solve our sustainability problem. It’s all nonsense. Of course we need to expose this mythology for what it is, and progress to more enlightened, sustainable prosperity strategies.

5. Propaganda from growth profiteers keep reasons 1-4 in play – We are programmed from birth to believe in and worship everlasting growth. News media and advertising reinforce that indoctrination on a daily basis. Some of this happens innocently enough – because journalists grow up with the same programming. However media companies and business tycoons benefit from a growing market so they intentionally serve up a steady diet of pro-growth Kool-Aid.

6. Family planning under attack - Lastly, we have the ultra-conservative attack on funding of family planning. I’ll say it: access to contraception. As more and more people come to understand that limiting family size is critical, compassionate and responsible, I think we can prevail. It starts with having frank dialog about it. World Population Day 2012 seems like a good day to start.

Dave Gardner directed the film, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, and has created www.worldpopulationday.org, to encourage honest conversations about overpopulation. To order the film or find a screening near you, visit www.growthbusters.org. Both are non-profit projects of Citizen-Powered Media. Permission is granted to publish this essay elsewhere in its entirety, provided full credit and link back to the above sites is included.

Metro areas in the U.S. with a stable population are proving growth is not the path to prosperity. Eben Fodor, community planning consultant and author of Better, Not Bigger, has just released a study comparing the fastest-growing metro areas of the U.S. with the slowest-growing, to test conventional wisdom that cities benefit from growth. This study ought to put the final nail in the coffin of the “grow or die” myth that misinforms public policies in many cities. Unfortunately, in most areas this myth is very much alive and well.

According to Fodor, “The slowest-growing MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas) outperformed the fastest-growing in every category. The 25 slowest-growing MSAs averaged almost 1% lower unemployment rates, 2.4% lower poverty rates, and a remarkable $8,455 more in per capita personal income in 2009. They also had larger income gains from 2000 to 2009 and saw significantly lower declines in income from the recession (2007-09). “

View excerpts of Eben Fodor from the upcoming documentary, GrowthBusters

The myth that growth leads to prosperity was also busted by this study, which revealed a decline of almost $2,500 in per capita income for each 1% increase in growth rate. A metro area with a stable, non-growing population would tend to see a 43% higher income gain than an area growing at 3% per year. And faster growth did not correlate to lower unemployment.

This takes the wind out of the sails of many local economic development bodies who do the bidding of growth profiteers (real estate developers, homebuilders, construction industry, mortgage banking, etc.). In my hometown, the Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corporation uses the job creation mantra to justify its requests for incentives and other public funding. This organization’s membership is dominated by the special interest growth industry. They are happy to have public growth subsidies boost the area’s population, thus increasing demand for new homes, mortgages, freeways, etc. They get publicly funded subsidies based on the myth that they bring jobs to the community.

According to Fodor, “There is no clear employment benefit shown from faster growth. There may be new jobs created as a result of growth, but apparently there are more newcomers and job seekers moving in than there are new jobs being created. The result is that local unemployment rates remain more or less the same, but the number of unemployed people increases with growth.”

The data show the fastest-growing metro areas were hardest hit by the recession. Many of the fastest-growing MSAs from 2000 to 2009 had income declines of 6% during the recessionary period from 2007 to 2009. Slower-growing areas fared much better. Many areas with stable or declining populations actually saw increases in personal income.

My read on the recession figures is the collapse caused the growth addicts to crash. Those not addicted fared much better. What can we learn from this? What kind of prosperity strategy might suit your community during this century as we bump up against the limits of resources like fresh water, fossil fuels and fertile soil?

Finally, the Fodor study found higher growth rates correspond to higher poverty rates. Strike three for the growth=prosperity myth.

The study, Relationship between Growth and Prosperity in 100 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas, compared the 25 fastest-growing metro areas with the 25 slowest growing. The fastest growing averaged 2.7% annual growth during the study period. The slowest growing MSAs were essentially stable populations, averaging less than .1% annual growth. This would indicate population stability makes very sound economic sense – for cities, for nations and for the world.

Dave Gardner
Filmmaker

For more information about the film, or to become a Growthbuster, visit www.growthbusters.org

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/12/cities-with-stable-population-outperform-fast-growing-cities/

Some people assume I’m a wealthy Hollywood producer, flush with cash to fund a little hobby-film about growth addiction. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Producing the documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth has turned out to be an exercise in involuntary simplicity. The first few years I continued taking on corporate film projects — to keep the lights on and to support the non-profit film. I also ran through my retirement savings. This year I mothballed the corporate work to devote full attention to finishing GrowthBusters – so we can release the film in the first half of 2011.

It’s not easy to attract major funding for a film project that questions the most fundamental beliefs powering our current system. Most people or organizations with money got that money by operating successfully in our growth-based system. It’s a pretty small slice of the universe of potential funders (both individuals and foundations) who are visionary enough to support a project this radical.

This has forced me to be extremely frugal – both personally and in my stewardship of this film project. While that’s been challenging and at times even frustrating, it turns out that cloud has a silver lining. Spending less money in many cases results in my walking lightly on this planet.  For example, I’ve had to be extremely efficient with my travel, minimizing airplane flights. Result: much smaller carbon footprint!

In short, being on a tight budget has encouraged me to learn to live with enough. I’ve been working for years now to get out of my growth-addicted, overconsuming habits; to focus on what brings real meaning to my life. Goodbye quest for more; hello satisfaction with sufficiency. Goodbye hamsterwheel in service to a gluttonous system, hello good life. Becoming a starving artist just makes that easier.

I’ve noticed parallels to this in the impacts of the recent recession. Everyone tightened their belts. Automobile sales dropped, so fewer were manufactured. More bicycles were sold than autos. GM stopped making Hummers. Airlines cut flights. Retail sales dropped, so consumer goods manufacturing was reduced. The average size of an American home shrank. Birth rates declined. Carbon emissions actually dropped.

In most cases these recession stories were presented as bad news. That’s the sad thing about a growth-addicted culture. The fact we needed to extract fewer resources to manufacture fewer cars should be good news! Isn’t it good for the planet and future generations that people wore their clothes longer and therefore made fewer clothing purchases? Shouldn’t we celebrate fewer planes in the air, consuming less jet fuel and pumping out less CO2? No, not in a culture of growth. Yet, the recession – painful as it is for our growth-addicted culture – is helping most of us to cut some of the excess out of our lives.

In the upcoming GrowthBusters film, I’ll be highlighting more examples of pro-growth bias in our news media. As we become aware of what’s in the Kool Aid we drink daily, it will begin to lose its power – over our lives and our culture.

P.S. Don’t feel sorry for me, but do pitch in and make a tax-deductible donation to the project so we can finish this film. I promise not to waste it on profligate consumption. And I can’t do it without your help.

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/10/involuntary-simplicity/

A few weeks ago I got a phone call from Australia. A gentleman named Dick Smith was on the line and he was very complimentary about our film project. Quickly I was brought up to speed on this man and his new, noble effort to get the world talking about limits to growth and into a recovery program for growth addiction.

$1m cash to save civilisation

That was the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald last week as Mr. Smith announced his one million dollar Wilberforce Award – a grant to be awarded to someone under 30 “who can impress me by becoming famous through his or her ability to show leadership in communicating an alternative to our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy.”

Did you see a news story about this audacious offer? I found no news stories about this outside of Australia, other than a photo in Times of India and the UK Guardian. The rest of the world apparently doesn’t consider this million-dollar prize offered by one individual newsworthy. I find that incredibly disappointing, but I suppose that is to be expected in a world where denial of limits to growth is so widespread and growth addiction is perpetuated by the pushers (growth profiteers, who include mainstream media).

In fact, Dick Smith has taken on the mainstream media in his quest to eliminate the megadose of pro-growth Kool Aid served to us daily. He recently took out this ad in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper.

Unless you live in Australia, you may not know who Dick Smith is. The subject line of his follow-up email to me read: Rapacious Capitalist Loves your Website. So, who is this “rapacious capitalist” who is not pushing growth at every turn in order to finance his next private jet or another 10,000 square-foot vacation home? You can read more about him here.

Smith is a man who concedes “I’ve benefited from a long period of constant economic and population growth – we are addicted to it.” He is indeed a wealthy businessman. But Dick Smith has seen the light. It has come to his attention (thanks to his daughter) that there are limits. He writes, “sooner or later this consumption growth will have an end. We appear to be already bumping against the limits of what our planet can sustain and the evidence is everywhere to see.”

I’m encouraged that a number of wealthy capitalists are speaking out today about the fallacy of our quest for and belief in unending growth. Media mogul Ted Turner frequently raises the issue of overpopulation and sustainability. “Too many people are using too much stuff,” he told Charlie Rose two years ago. Zhang Yue, Chairman and Chief executive of BROAD Air Conditioning spoke eloquently about limits to growth in a speech last year to the Business for Social Responsibility Conference: “Today, that mission to grow more, to get more, to make more, isn’t suitable for society.”

Fact is we’ve all benefited from the era of growth. But just as it’s not too late for those who’ve built empires and made fortunes to learn from our mistakes and promote a more sustainable model, it’s not too late for society at large. It is time for us to get over our growth addiction and move quickly to a model that celebrates “enough.”

I applaud Australian Dick Smith for having the vision to see where our worship of growth everlasting will take us, the courage to confess his sins, and enough concern about future generations to put his money where his mouth is. According to Smith, “I will be looking for candidates whose actions over the next year show that they have what it takes to be among the next generation of leaders our incredible planet so badly needs.”

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/08/million-dollar-prize-to-cure-growth-addiction/  For more information about Hooked on Growth, visit www.growthbusters.org.

That’s my line in the opening tease for this recent conversation on Peak Moment TV. If I do say so myself, this is a good metaphor to explain how we’re fiddling around at the margins while we fail to recognize we’re participants in a growth-seeking system that has us locked on a collision course with limits to growth.

Janaia Donaldson interviews Dave Gardner on Peak Moment

I’m happy to share this interview produced by Janaia Donaldson and Robin Mallgren of Peak Moment TV. They gave me an outstanding opportunity to explain the what and why of my upcoming documentary, Hooked on Growth. If you want to understand what the non-profit GrowthBusters film project is all about, watch this interview.

Back to my Thelma and Louise metaphor: To elaborate, it’s as if we’re in a convertible roaring toward a cliff. The cliff is far enough in the distance we can’t make it out clearly. It doesn’t seem like an immediate danger. But as we get closer and begin to realize where we’re heading, what do we do? Instead of stopping or turning the car, we fiddle with the radio – change the volume, tune to a different station. We roll down the windows, dust off the dash, clean the mirror. But we don’t slam on the brakes or do a James Bond J-turn to quickly head in another direction. Heck, we don’t even gently change course.

Of course, I’m referring to modern society’s irrational, growth-addicted response to mounting evidence we have hit the limits of Earth’s ability to meet our needs and wants. We’re experiencing peak oil, peak water and peak food. We’ve passed peak soil, peak fish, peak biodiversity, and optimum climate. You get the picture.

NO, you don’t! None of us do. We are not behaving as if facing an emergency. I count myself among the irrational here. Trust me, I’m working on it, but I’m still navigating, living and working within the system that all evidence demands we leave behind. I still get in a car and drive several times each week. I still board a jet airliner from time to time. I confess! I even enjoy the occasional cheeseburger!

At our best, mainstream environmentalists give away compact flourescent light bulbs, fight sprawl, and promote composting, carpooling and permaculture. While these are all good moves, at this stage of the game they will make about as much difference to the outcome as cleaning the mirror of Thelma & Louise’s convertible. They are not enough if we don’t change course. Why do so few of us address the systemic problems? As I explain to Janaia in this episode of Peak Moment, my documentary Hooked on Growth attempts to answer that question.

A growing grassroots support network is helping produce, fund and distribute the film. With their help, and yours, Hooked on Growth will hit screens the first half of 2011. Check out the complete interview, and explore other episodes of Peak Moment. I love what Janaia and Robin are doing. And join us at GrowthBusters. Become part of a groundbreaking film project that will deliver a much-needed wake-up call. It was sad to see Thelma and Louise drive off that cliff. Let’s not join them.

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/08/heading-for-a-cliff-with-thelma-louise/

One of the challenges that come with appearing in the film you’re directing is you have to get over your vanity. To be authentic, you have to be willing to show the warts along with the good moments. So in that spirit I’m sharing this interview which wasn’t one of my best. I have my good days (in which I’m brilliant!) but there are also days I can’t think as fast as my mouth moves. Apparently last Wednesday was one of those, but the conversation was still meaningful.

View Sustainable 1000 TV
Shane Snipes interviews Dave Gardner

I was glad to meet Shane Snipes, who stopped in as part of his Eco-Road Trip across the 48 contiguous United States. Every day he webcasts a live interview, which is pretty impressive. Those interviews are archived here, and at Shane’s website, www.sustainable1000.com/ you can find links to his YouTube channel, blogs, etc.

For such a young man, Shane has led quite the life. Fulbright Scholar, founder of several  European environmental and social issues organizations, university instructor, corporate trainer, environmental auditor, and now cross-country filmmaker/blogger/interview host. Shane’s personal motto is consume less and live more.  I wish Shane much success and happiness and hope he gives me a chance to do an even better interview next time he’s through.

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/07/sustainable-1000-tv-interview/   Get more information about the film and join the cause at www.growthbusters.org.

Today fifteen on-camera performers and a volunteer crew of 10 will be joining me in a big Hollywood production. We’re shooting a video visualizing what our world might look like in a future where continued overpopulation and over-consumption have led to worldwide resource scarcity and social conflict.

It will be a scary picture. Will this kind of shock therapy work? Will audiences view this science fiction scenario and immediately change their own lives, get over the taboo on discussing responsible family-size decisions, and step up efforts to change a system hooked on growth?

The truth is we don’t know. Some sustainability advocates advise that instead of pointing out the dangers of where we’re headed, we should focus on painting an optimistic picture of where we want to go. They’re dead certain doom and gloom won’t sell an idea. And they may be right. Yet, there is no evidence it’s any more effective to follow the advice of that old song: “eliminate the negative, and accentuate the positive.”

No one has ever complained about doom and gloom when someone shouted a warning that kept a person from stepping off the curb in front of an oncoming bus. So I think we should grow up and be willing to discuss both the negative consequences of business-as-usual and the joys of stepping off the hamsterwheel of growth addiction. I suspect there are benefits to both messages of hope and red flags of warning. Both have a role to play.

Along these lines, I don’t think it serves us well to tiptoe around a subject just because it’s unpleasant or unpopular. I spoke out about this last year in this appearance on Inside Story, broadcast by Al Jazeera English on World Population Day in 2009:

Dave Gardner on Inside Story

When the negative baggage associated with population control was brought up, I responded, “what about population information?” It is time we openly discuss overpopulation and educate everyone around the world, rich or poor, dark-skinned or light, about the ramifications of their family-size decisions. There is nothing draconian or racist about that. In fact it is a very humanitarian, loving, and compassionate idea – to act responsibly so that our children can have a good life. I also advocated for citizens to give organizations and elected officials permission to address this issue openly and honestly.

As it happens, today is once again World Population Day. And I am disappointed, yet again, that World Population Day statements from the U.N. Secretary-General and UNFPA Executive Director intentionally tap dance around the subject of overpopulation. All I can say is, “Good grief! Get a backbone!”

Dave Gardner is producing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity.

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/07/world-population-day-and-were-still-avoiding-the-subject/

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco, on the final day of a ten-day West Coast filming trip. In my 30 years traveling the globe directing films for airlines, energy and chemical companies, software firms and public television, I always had a decent expense account. So this is the first time I’ve couch-surfed rather than stay at hotels, the first time I’ve dined in the car or a grocery store instead of Outback Steakhouse. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and water have gotten us by.

Necessity was behind the decision to tap the GrowthBusters support network for accomodations. Since we’ve so far raised only a modest percentage of our production budget for the film, Hooked on Growth, I have to be creative to capture the material we need while spending as little as possible.

It was no surprise, but still remarkable, that relying on the generosity of kindred spirits is much more rewarding than falling back on the old habit of Hampton Inn and Starbucks. At every stop I met the most amazing people — enlightened and inspired to live a life where less is more: less commerce and more community, less consumption and more sharing. There is a phenomenal grass roots network of people and organizations around the world waking up from our collective trance and creating new ways to live after growth addiction.

I was fortunate to have Jason Cross accompany me and serve as camera assistant on the trip. Jason volunteered his time and paid his way. Thanks to John in Seattle, a Buddhist meditation room provided accomodation the first night of our journey.

The next night one of the Vancouver De-Growth Conference organizers, Irene Stupka, and her roommates Laura and Chad offered us great company and a night’s lodging in their compact apartment. We enjoyed sharing thoughts and experiences around the kitchen table late that night after the evening’s conference film screenings. The next few nights ecological economist Tom Green shared his apartment and showed us some really creative videos his students have been making about economic growth. I’ll share these in a later post.

In Portland I finally got to meet prolific longtime GrowthBusters volunteer Albert Kaufman, who offered his house as an interview location. And we stayed overnight with another GrowthBuster, Ralph Risch. Ralph, his wife Amy and kids showed us their low-impact lifestyle, which includes chickens, bees and produce in the back yard. We also connected with a new member of the GrowthBusters Volunteer Network, Nancy, who can’t wait to put her passion to work geting our film finished and seen.

Tired, hungry and parched after a long day shooting lakes, aqueducts and pumping plants, Jason and I dragged ourselves up the stairs in San Francisco to be greeted by amazing food and wine and a small gathering of young Transition activists, courtesy of our hosts, Johnny and Colin. They saw keeping us fed and sheltered as a great contribution to the film, and they were right. Finally, Kent and Mary in Palo Alto opened their doors to us, grilled me thoroughly about the GrowthBusters project, and shared a few laughs as we watched my Endangered Species Condoms video on YouTube.

Of course the Vancouver conference and the interviews we captured from Vancouver to Palo Alto were rich with insight and information. If I get the chance I’ll share some of that in future posts, but it’s a good bet you’ll have to wait and see the film to get the full benefit of my British Columbia/Washington/Oregon/California adventure.

Must close for now. I’ve got to drop Jason at the train station to head toward his summer job in Kings Canyon National Park, shoot one last interview in Oakland, miraculously pack our production gear into two 48-pound suitcases, and then wing my way back to my own bed in Colorado.

(written on 2010/05/08)

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/05/growthbusters-network-pitches-in-for-west-coast-shoot/

Dave Gardner is directing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. For more information and to become a GrowthBuster, visit www.growthbusters.org

Posted by Dave Gardner on Apr 13, 2010

“The future ain’t what it used to be.” Yogi Berra

Who knew Yogi Berra would be so prescient? I just finished Bill McKibben’s newest book, Eaarth: Making A Life On A Tough New Who Planet, and I am giving it three thumbs up. The book chillingly catalogs how the human enterprise has remade the face of the planet – and in the process created what could be a terrifying future. But it also offers hope. And part of that hope is really not even debatable: the end of growth.

After reading his Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future a few years ago, I caught up with McKibben in Boulder, Colorado to interview him for my documentary, Hooked on Growth. It was an outstanding conversation (see a clip below). In both book and interview he had some brilliant observations and recommendations for humankind to move in a more sustainable direction.

Video: Bill McKibben in Hooked on Growth

Shortly after our interview he launched the Step It Up and then 350.org campaigns to raise awareness and encourage action to reduce carbon emissions. These were no small feats. CNN described the 350.org day of climate action last October as “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.” For the past couple of years McKibben has put a laser-like focus on climate change. So much so, I hadn’t even bothered to keep him updated on my film, in which climate change is just one of a long list of evidence we are bumping up against the limits to growth on a finite planet. I thought he might be steering clear of the hot-potato issue of economic growth because it could limit the popularity of his 350.org.

So I was a bit surprised, and thrilled, that much of Eaarth is devoted to limits to growth and why we’re about to enter a post-growth world. McKibben sums up the purpose of the book:

“We’re moving quickly from a world where we push nature around to a world where nature pushes back…But we’ve still got to live on that world, so we better start figuring out how.”

He observes,

“I don’t think the growth paradigm can rise to the occasion; I think the system has met its match.”

As I’ve campaigned to get my own community, as well as the world, into a recovery program for growth addiction, I’ve learned there is nothing in our modern world as sacred as growth. While the famous Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth in 1972 began a global dialog about the unsustainability of economic growth, over the last few decades most of the mainstream environmental movement decided economic growth was too revered to even try to dismantle. It became politically incorrect to question continued, perpetual economic growth.

Today that’s evidenced by all the talk about green jobs. In order to jolt us out of our carbon-intensive ways, the environmental movement has resorted to greenwash. We can combat climate change and put everyone back to work – in the new green, clean-energy economy. McKibben bravely acknowledges,

“we’ve seized on green growth as the path out of all our troubles.”

He quotes Al Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon in a Financial Times essay: “we need to make ‘growing green’ our mantra.”

If we’re honest with ourselves, it’s not that simple. We cannot keep growing or even maintain the scale of the current global economy just by making it green. Not if we want our civilization to survive in any recognizable form. So I find it gratifying to read McKibben acknowledge in Eaarth that green technology alone is not going to save us. We need a sea change, a shift out of the perpetual growth paradigm.

“It’s not just the banks that have gotten to be too big to fail, but all the arrangements of modern life.”

My hope is this book might re-ignite the fire over the unsustainability of economic growth (after all, that is one of the main premises of my film, Hooked on Growth). It will no doubt enlighten many who weren’t around when limits to growth were being discussed back in the 1970s. He understands and explains our cultural obsession with growth:

“In the world we grew up in, our most ingrained economic and political habit was growth; it’s the reflex we’re going to have to temper, and it’s going to be tough….for the two hundred years since Adam Smith, we’ve assumed that more is better, and that the answer to any problem is another burst of expansion. That’s because it’s worked, at least for a long while….”

McKibben takes us to task for ignoring two decades of climate change warnings, forgetting the forecasts of Limits to Growth, and pretending oil supplies will never run out. We’ve so far failed to recognize that the human enterprise has matured:

“Ever since Jimmy Carter first hinted at it in the 1970s, we’ve been desperate to flog our economy back to life. We deregulated, never mind the pollution. We cut taxes, never mind the gross inequality it created. We handed out cheap mortgages, never mind the headache we know was coming. We have, in short, goosed our economy with one jolt of Viagra after another, anything to avoid facing the fact that our reproductive days were past….”

But we have clearly hit the limits. While McKibben focuses primarily on evidence and impacts of climate change, he provides other evidence that the size of our enterprise has peaked. Since 1986 per-capita grain yield has been declining (grain yields stagnated while population continued to climb). In spite of a host of technological advancements in agriculture, in spite of multi-national industrial-scale farming, new chemicals, genetically engineered crops and sophisticated automation, the amount of food per person has been dropping for over a quarter century.

“Times change, and when they do we must respond.”

After painting a rather bleak picture of the predicament in which we find ourselves, McKibben spends the last half of the book exploring ways we can, and probably will, survive. He introduces us to pieces of the puzzle forming an alternative, post-growth world. He mentions movements such as slow food, slow cities, slow design, slow money. He discusses the importance of community. Over 4,000 local currency projects.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do if we’re going to survive on this Eaarth, but most of it needs to be done close to home. Small, not big: dispersed, not centralized.”

He writes that in a hot, post-growth world, decision making needs to slide toward local levels. We need to scale down. Growth was about big, about centralization. Now it’s time for localization. He observes the failure rate of big banks during the recession has been seven times greater than that of small banks. American states and cities have done far more than the federal government to fight climate change. Small, family-owned and managed farms are making a comeback, and we’re learning how to grow better food with less machinery and fertilizer. The number of farmer’s markets has quadrupled in the last decade.

Bill McKibben leaves the reader with a sense of impending doom: life as we know it cannot continue. But he also leaves us with a prescription for – at worst – getting by; for making the best of a bad situation. But many, McKibben included, believe some of the needed adjustments will actually improve our lives.

McKibben reminds us the founder of Club of Rome (sponsor of the Limits to Growth study) stated, “The future is no longer what it was thought to be…,” bringing that funny Yogi Berra aphorism home in what is turning out to be a very chilling, but also promising way.

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/04/too-big-to-succeed-bill-mckibbens-new-book-eaarth/

Dave Gardner is producing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. For more information or to join the cause, visit www.GrowthBusters.org

“Go well, do well, my children. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.”

- Stewart Udall

The environmental and sustainability movements lost a great champion Saturday with the passing of Stewart Udall. Mr. Udall left an indelible mark on the planet by protecting vast areas of North America from the indelible mark of encroachment by humankind.

For the past two years I’d been hoping to make a short trip down the freeway to Santa Fe, New Mexico to chat with Mr. Udall and capture an interview for my film, Hooked on Growth. The fact I procrastinated adds a little to my sadness. The good news is he does appear on the silver screen in the documentary Earth Days, coming to PBS April 19 in the U.S.

Stewart Udall in Earth Days

As U.S. Secretary of the Interior in the 1960s, Stewart Udall oversaw the creation of 4 national parks, 6 national monuments, 9 national recreation areas, 50 wildlife refuges and 8 national seashores. His son Tom and nephew Mark Udall carry on his legacy as they serve today in the U.S. Senate.

I’d like to memorialize Stewart Udall with a few of his own words that struck a chord for me:

“Over the long haul of life on this planet, it is the ecologists, and not the bookkeepers of business, who are the ultimate accountants.”

From a letter he and his wife wrote to their grandchildren:

“Americans must finally cast aside our notion that we can continue the wasteful consumption patterns of our past. We must promote a consciousness attuned to a frugal, highly efficient mode of living….

To sustain life on our small planet, we will need a wider, all-encompassing planetary resource ethic based on values implemented by mutual cooperation. This ethic must be rooted in the most intrinsic values of all: Caring, sharing, and mutual efforts that reach beyond all obstacles and boundaries.

Go well, do well, my children. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.”

- Stewart and Lee Udall

Originally posted at http://growthbusters.org/2010/03/stewart-udall-january-31-1920-march-20-2010/

Dave Gardner is producing the documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. For more information, visit www.GrowthBusters.org.