The Overpopulation Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Editorial Cartoons: What Makes Joel Pett Tick? May 23, 2017

Show notes

Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Joel Pett has long had our environment, sustainability and overpopulation on his mind. His cartoons have graced USA Today, the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and his hometown Lexington Herald-Leader for over three decades.

Frequently lampooning denial and other irrational human behavior disrespecting our critical, life-supporting ecosystems, Joel’s deep connection with the natural world inspires him to use his creativity for good! Pett is also the winner of the 1999 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for cartooning, and a 1995 winner of the Global Media Award for cartoons on population issues.

In this charming conversation, Joel shares stories about some of his favorite cartoons and reacts to Overpopulation Podcast host Dave Gardner’s analysis. While you listen, peruse Pett’s population cartoons.

CAUTION: Some adult language.

Links:

Joel Pett's editorial cartoons

Small Family Campaigns & Incentives Jan 17, 2017

Show notes

Are there ethical and moral ways for governments to accelerate the move to smaller families - in order to contract population? Ethicists Colin Hickey and Jake Earl weigh in on why this should be done, and how we might do it fairly, in order to shrink our carbon footprint. Earl and Hickey co-authored with Travis Rieder the paper, "Population Engineering and the Fight Against Climate Change".

Links:

Colin Hickey | Universiteit Utrecht Fair Limits | Interview Colin Hickey for Ethics Institute Newsletter Jake Earl, Ph.D. Jake Earl talk highlighted in student newspaper

Our Moral Obligation to Conceive Just One Child Nov 15, 2016

Show notes

Our efforts to date are falling “woefully short” of achieving the greenhouse gas reduction needed to avoid dramatic, probably catastrophic, climate disruption. Bioethicist Travis Rieder shakes things up by asking the question: In the age of climate change, is there a moral imperative not to have children, or to have only one child?

Rieder has brought a degree of scientific rigor to exploring this question that’s finally starting to make this conversation acceptable. Responses to an NPR story about this ran 10 to 1 very favorable.

In this conversation, Rieder starts with the fact that the decision not to have one child is more than 20 times more effective at reducing your carbon footprint than the sum total of an entire lifetime doing the six most common “green” activities. He then takes us through some of the logic he used to arrive at the answer to that morality question.

Links:

Colin Hickey | Universiteit Utrecht Fair Limits | Interview Colin Hickey for Ethics Institute Newsletter Jake Earl, Ph.D. Jake Earl talk highlighted in student newspaper

Evil Plot to End Overpopulation Oct 18, 2016

Show notes

Will it take mass murder to bring world population back to a sustainable level? Novelist Benjamin Dancer joins host Dave Gardner to discuss the issues raised in his novel, Patriarch Run.

Link:

Benjamin Dancer

Choosing ChildFree Aug 01, 2016

Show notes

In observance of International Childfree Day, author Laura Carroll joins host Dave Gardner to discuss the choice couples make to be childfree. Laura served as editor for the book, Man Swarm: How Overpopulation is Killing the Wild World by Dave Foreman, and is the author of The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Minds From Outmoded Thinking About Parenthood & Reproduction Will Create a Better World, and Families of Two: Interviews With Happily Married Couples Without Children by Choice.

For over the last 15 years, she has been researching the childfree choice and those who make it, and has interviewed thousands who’ve made this choice. The discussion includes our pronatal culture and where to get support, myths about family size, the cost of raising children, and of course doing your part to solve overpopulation. Laura believes there is growing acceptance of the childfree choice.

Links:

Laura Carroll - Nonfiction Author, Childfree Choice Expert International Childfree Day

Move Upstream - We're Overpopulated Mar 17, 2016

Show notes

Author, naturalist, and World Population Balance advisor, Karen Shragg completely supports working on the many environmental and social issues of our time, "but nothing will matter when we run out of the vital resources of this planet, or create a climate too unstable to grow enough food." In this interview with World Population Balance's David Paxson and Dave Gardner, Shragg explores the premise of her book, Move Upstream: A Call to Solve Overpopulation. The three attempt to untangle the irrational avoidance of fundamental truths about overpopulation. Karen thinks "it’s everyone’s responsibility, who has a microphone, to talk about this issue. We need to be afraid of the problem, not the solution."

Links:

movingupstream.com

Overpopulation: What do Young People Think? Jan 20, 2016

Show notes

College student Jasmine Stark shares why and how she became concerned about overpopulation, and what she is doing about it. Her responses to the crisis include choosing to conceive just one child and having lots of conversations with her peers to put overpopulation on their radar screens.

Honey, We Need to Shrink the Population Dec 03, 2015

Show notes

How do we know the world is overpopulated? And why is it necessary to begin dramatically reducing births? Dave Paxson and Dave Gardner are joined by World Population Balance Research Director Alan Ware, who runs down the list of essential, life-supporting natural resources being depleted by the needs and wants of 7.3 billion people. The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations with World Population Balance President David Paxson, Executive Director Dave Gardner, and guests.

To learn more about the subject or about World Population Balance, and to support our work, visit worldpopulationbalance.org.

Overpopulation is Solvable Sep 02, 2015

Show notes

President Emeritus, David Paxson, joins podcast host and Executive Director, Dave Gardner, in this enlightening overview of the overpopulation crisis and how to solve it.

Most of us don’t know that much about world population. Is it growing? How fast? Has it already outstripped the planet’s capacity to support it? How do we know? Is there ANYTHING we can do about it? The biggest surprise is that the solution to overpopulation is within our grasp.

To learn more about the subject and to support the work of World Population Balance visit worldpopulationbalance.org.