As a culture, we struggle to talk about population. Some consider more people better as a moral absolute. To them, more people solve more problems, so there can never be too many. Others consider Earth’s resources finite. To them, more people means less resources per person, which means beyond an optimum number, more people means lower quality of life, ultimately leading to a collapse of population. The first group values[…] Keep reading →

Seth Godin was one of my first podcast guests and I interviewed him at his home north of the city. He also endorsed my book Leadership Step by Step. He has huge followings who love his work. I know because at his home, I saw the huge piles of handwritten thank-you notes he received, all opened, all clearly read. He recently put out the word to his community that the[…] Keep reading →

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Everyone claims to want to help poor people, poor countries, the sick, children, old people, and other vulnerable populations. Everyone claims to want to help everyone live longer, healthier lives. Nobody claims to want to hurt the vulnerable. After you hear enough heavy polluters say it, you recognize it as empty rhetoric to make themselves feel better and disarm opponents. The question[…] Keep reading →

If you’re thinking of buying a Christmas tree: read this post and the letters from the reader who prompted it. One of my new year traditions is taking pictures of the huge number of trees my neighbors throw out after the few weeks they put them in their homes. How much more obvious it can be that they’re celebrating a pagan holiday from northern Europe than celebrating snow and fir[…] Keep reading →

You can imagine all sorts of reasons that made it more possible for me to live with my apartment disconnected from the electric grid than you, but admit it: if you didn’t know I did it, you’d believe it was impossible. Yet today began my seventh month. I’m not saying because I could do it, you can. I learned that because all human beings did it for 300,000 years, I[…] Keep reading →

If you think pollution, pushing people off their land, and putting homo sapiens at risk of global collapse is some abstract future risk, I invite you to take your head out of the sand. People are dying by the millions annually from pollution today. Fossil fuel companies pay militias to enslave, rape, and kill people for oil. I prefer not to look away, nor to limit my imagination to thinking[…] Keep reading →

Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines about tomorrow: World population to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, according to United Nations predictions. Are we overpopulated? You’ve seen graphs of population projections from the UN showing the population leveling off or possibly decreasing by 2100 like this one. Does the graph reassure you and make you feel good that the population problem is working itself out with no big collapse likely,[…] Keep reading →