We began the Overpopulation Venture seven years in the past to spur sincere dialogue about inhabitants points amongst scientists and students, environmentalists and most people. Together with your assist and encouragement, we proceed to pursue that mission.
by Frank, Jane, Phil and Pernilla
In 2024 the human financial system, already a lot too massive for the Earth, grew even greater. We burned extra fossil fuels, poured extra concrete, raised extra crops and livestock, used and discarded extra plastic, and hogged extra of Earth’s restricted habitats and assets than ever earlier than. This disastrous extra was fueled largely by humanity’s unprecedented numbers, augmented by continued international inhabitants development.
The mainstream media typically ignores the basic drivers of our environmental issues, or treats them as inevitabilities. So do most environmental teams and progressive politicians, who content material themselves with suggesting band-aids for the various signs of human extravagance. In distinction, TOP gives our readers with a important lens on international environmental information. We advocate real looking alternate options to the financial and demographic establishment. Except our societies start to experiment with such alternate options quickly, the long run appears bleak.
In 2024, TOP researchers revealed three scholarly research, with a number of others within the pipeline:
As well as, we proceed to get requests for our 2022 article Overpopulation is a significant reason behind biodiversity loss and smaller human populations are essential to protect what’s left. It has been cited 79 instances throughout the previous two years, in accordance with Google Scholar.
In different highlights, this yr Frank and several other colleagues revealed two op-eds in main Swedish newspapers advocating smart, demographically-informed inhabitants insurance policies: Earth’s nature is being ravaged by inhabitants development and Weak assist for the federal government’s new international help proposals. And Richard Heinberg interviewed Jane for Resilience.org on the continued problem of overpopulation.
As regular, a lot of our focus was on publishing our blogs, 41 in complete. Reviewing them, we’re struck by the wide range of matters explored; it’s clear that inhabitants touches on many points of our lives and our world. Our blogs ranged from Mexico to Indonesia, Sweden to Nigeria, and plenty of different places each geographical and mental.
Beside our 4 TOP principals, nineteen authors contributed weblog texts:
Malte Andersson, Nandita Bajaj, Gaia Baracetti, Giangiacomo Bravo, Brian Czech, Céline Delacroix, Álvaro J. de Regil, Richard Grossman, Richard Heinberg, Ella Köster, Brad Meiklejohn, Veronika Perková, Roland Schmutz, Joseph Speidel, Jan van Weeren, Stephen Warren, Madeline Weld, Nordhild Wetzler and Stephen Williams.
We’re grateful for these contributions, from which we realized rather a lot! A particular shout out goes to the indefatigable Dick Grossman, who contributed 4 topical blogs.
Whereas they coated a variety of floor, a lot of our blogs clustered in 4 areas of explicit curiosity and significance.
First, the contested relationship between inhabitants and financial degrowth. We and our friends explored this difficult but essential matter repeatedly:
Second, immigration into the developed world, significantly its political and ecological ramifications. Like the right path to degrowth, specifying sustainable immigration insurance policies is a vital matter that may solely develop in significance within the coming years:
Third, Jane O’Sullivan saved a working tally of the follies perpetrated by the UN’s Inhabitants Fund, above all their complacency relating to continued inhabitants development within the growing world:
Lastly, we made a concerted effort to share good work being accomplished by others on inhabitants issues, each new scholarship:
And political work to finish inhabitants development within the growing world and foster inhabitants lower within the developed world:
We hope you have got discovered these blogs informative and entertaining. Once more, many because of all our contributors — together with everybody chiming in with feedback!
This yr, we misplaced two valued supporters and collaborators. Dan Carrigan, founding father of the GAIA Earth-Steadiness Basis, died on 4 March 2024 after a protracted battle with coronary heart illness. In his closing years, Dan created his basis to assist work towards ecologically sustainable societies. It funded various inhabitants advocacy organizations, together with Inhabitants Steadiness, the Inhabitants Institute and Middle for Organic Variety within the US, and Inhabitants Issues within the UK. We’re grateful for his beneficiant assist of TOP. Dan’s donations enabled us to increase the part-time appointment of our multi-talented assistant, Pernilla Hansson, with out whom we’d be a lot much less productive.
Carl Wahren, a good friend and colleague, handed away in April. Carl supported TOP from the start and was an enormous in worldwide household planning efforts of the Nineteen Sixties, 70s and 80s. A digital archive of Carl’s papers is obtainable on our web site. Frank interviewed Carl a couple of months earlier than he handed away to gather some closing reflections on his life and work, whereas Céline Delacroix interviewed Joseph Speidel on Carl’s many contributions to worldwide household planning.
We couldn’t have accomplished all of the work of the previous seven years with out beneficiant assist from Dan and others. We additionally thank Dag Lindgren for private donations (items) to Pernilla Hansson and Nicola Turner for wonderful work in opposition to overpopulation. If you want to donate to TOP, we’d be glad about your assist. We want to assist younger college students who then can afford to check overpopulation, its causes, and options. Please contact Frank Gotmark at frank.gotmark@bioenv.gu.se.
The futility of an environmentalism that refuses to simply accept limits turns into extra apparent yearly. The failure of this method was amply on show in 2024, as humanity charged additional into ecological overshoot, whereas catastrophic local weather change and mass species extinction moved nearer to actualization.
Be a part of us in combating for a greater future. Much less is extra, whether or not we’re speaking about carbon emissions, vehicles on the roads and jets within the air, Elon Musk’s web wealth, or human numbers. Unfold the phrase!
