Imagine you’re sitting in your home, comfortably with your family, say a spouse and a kid. Then five other families move into your home with you. You can imagine conflict would arise more when you more than quintuple the number and density of people in your home. I found the following graphs in a piece a podcast guest, Jane O’Sullivan, wrote, The Catalyst of Overpopulation in the Gaza Conflict. I[…] Keep reading →

I love people and I love technology. Nobody wants ten billion people enjoying all the technology they want as comfortably and conveniently as they want more than I do. If we do it, we must do it sustainably if we want to avoid collapse, and unfortunately, we are not on that path to do it. If such a future is possible, it’s tempting to keep living as we do and[…] Keep reading →

People act like humans managing our population is some new idea. People have been able to manage our population as long as we’ve been human. When there’s more energy and resources, people have bigger families. America’s westward expansion followed by its extracting and burning fossil fuels created the material conditions for fast growth. In westward expansion, arable land was a proxy for energy since plants converted sunlight into energy people[…] Keep reading →

When people who understand our environmental problems talk about population, they have to pussyfoot around the issue since other people will almost inevitably respond with some Twitter-like attempt to checkmate them by accusing them of racism, sexism, Nazism, or promoting eugenics, forced abortion, or government coercion. That knee-jerk association shows that person’s ignorance more than anything useful. Nazis promoted economic growth and built autobahns (highways). Should we associate economic growth[…] Keep reading →

This week I read and watched: The Great Dance, directed by Craig and Damon Foster: I re-watched this documentary helped open my eyes and mind to the sophistication and complexity of people and cultures we call indigenous. I grew up to see them as stuck in the Stone Age and to fear the possibility of regressing to be like them if we don’t keep progressing. Learning some anthropology from The[…] Keep reading →

Population modeling can be hard, as is figuring out a prediction’s accuracy, therefore how much confidence to give your conclusions. Many people can’t hear talk about population without hearing things like eugenics and racism even when they aren’t there. But population is one of the most important factors in sustainability. Everything becomes easier when population isn’t near or above what Earth can sustain and harder when it’s above. I came[…] Keep reading →

Population modeling can be hard, as is figuring out a prediction’s accuracy, therefore how much confidence to give your conclusions. Many people can’t hear talk about population without hearing things like eugenics and racism even when they aren’t there. But population is one of the most important factors in sustainability. Everything becomes easier when population isn’t near or above what Earth can sustain and harder when it’s above. I came[…] Keep reading →