The environment needs more people, not fewer

In these latter days everybody is familiar with concepts like the carbon footprint, sustainability, and the like. Measures of the ecological cost of the things we do. One of the most irksome problems bedeviling Earth's biosphere at present is the outrageous cost of many aspects of many human lifestyles. Society is gradually and too late awakening t... See more

We face the defining problem of our generation; of the entire human project thus far. Climate spans physics, chemistry, ecology, geology, policy, technology, land use, human rights, and more. It’s time we take this seriously as a gigantic opportunity for human progress, and rally to solve it!

But as long as people keep creating more stuff that people want, and finding ways to make people pay for that stuff, GDP keeps growing. The question is whether that requires increasing use of natural resources. Degrowthers say yes; the assertion that “a finite planet cannot sustain infinite growth” has become something that people intone online as ... See more