The Issue: The Cancling of Overpopulation Activists
For too many years unjustified accusations have
flown at those of us who have been beating the
overpopulation drum. The worst of those, “The
People Who Hate People,” (The Atlantic) inspired this
paper. [1] At best our meager lot of degrowth and
overpopulation activists are told we only care about
trees and wildlife at the expense of human rights. At
worst we are labeled racists and just plain anti-human.
This is an expedient way to shut down a much-needed
conversation, avoid the truth and any hope of solving
what is behind our booming environmental crisis. It
is a lazy discourse at best and environmentally
damaging at its worst. Those on the far left of the
spectrum point their self-righteous fingers at the anti-
growth/overpopulation activists and shame them for
blaming the poor instead of going after those in the
developed world for living relatively luxurious lives.
In so many circles, from academia to the major media
outlets, it is now more politically correct to go after
air conditioning than it is to wave the family planning
flag.
Journalist and author Bari Weiss speaks extensively
about the trap of cancel culture. She describes the
damage it is doing to our democracy and its abuse of
the first amendment’s guarantee to free speech. She
describes this dangerous movement this way:
“Ideas are replaced with identity. Forgiveness
is replaced with punishment. Debate is
replaced with disinvitation and de-
platforming. Diversity is replaced with
homogeneity of thought. Inclusion with
exclusion. Excellence with equity.
In this ideology, disagreement is recast as
trauma. So speech is violence. But violence,
when carried out by the right people in pursuit
of a just cause, is not violence at all – but in
fact justice. In this ideology, bullying is
wrong, unless you are bullying the right
people, in which case it’s very, very good. In
this ideology, information that does not
comport with The Narrative is recast as
disinformation, its proponents as conspiracy
theorists. In this ideology, education is not
about teaching people how to think, it’s about
re-educating them in what to think. In this
ideology the need to feel safe trumps the need
to speak truthfully.”[2]
This NPG Forum paper is a call for the need to
create a safe discussion space for those who have a
great depth of knowledge and concern about what our
anthropocentric views and the untethered growth of
the human enterprise is doing to the very possibility
of even having a future on a planet we are
systematically destroying.
To begin with, these critics have no idea what
overpopulation is or that its effects are doing all the
things they say they are against. Too many people
hear overpopulation and immediately jump to the
conclusion that this will become a scientific excuse
to destroy people, especially those already
marginalized. Without considering its biological
definition, they assume that this whole concept is fuel
for an evil perpetrator’s desire to eliminate his or her
designated enemies.
Overpopulation can, and does, happen to all
species and humans are no exception. Humans are
quintessential consumers and when their numbers are
excessive their damage is also excessive. Any
organism can exceed the carrying capacity of its
habitat, because any and all habitats have limited space,
sources of water, arable soil, etc. Overpopulation is not
a fixed number. A Bedouin tribe, for instance, living
and herding in a desert may have only 1,000 members,
but because the environment is so harsh that number
may represent an upper limit for them.
It’s so unfortunate that today’s academic climate
and general public discourse are identity-based rather
than evidence-based. If they were based on evidence,
it would be relatively easy to point out that
overpopulation is caused by more births than deaths
over time, reduced mortality due to an increase in
medical advances, increased immigration and
decreased emigration. It results in a scarcity of
resources which in turn causes an increase in misery
and suffering. Here is a list of just some of the negative
effects of overpopulation: loss of fresh water, species
extinction, lower life expectancy in the fastest growing
countries, depletion of natural resources, increased
emergence of epidemics and pandemics, less freedom
and more restrictions, more intensive farming
practices, increased habitat loss, increased global
warming and climate change, and elevated crime
rates.[3] To those who wonder how I can work on such a
challenging issue, I tell them with one issue I am able
to address a myriad of ills, all with the intention of
being very pro-humanity.
It is not just illogical to suggest that those who are
working to prevent all of the maladies listed above
are anything but warriors for justice both in their
actions and intent, it is outrageous.
When critics like Demsas in the aforementioned
Atlantic article, label overpopulation activists as
being unfair to the poor and marginalized, it is a very
narrow-minded argument. A deeper look would
reveal deep care and concern. Sir David
Attenborough frequently points out that humans are
destroying the life-giving forces of the earth with both
their numbers and habits. He is a patron of England’s
NGO Population Matters. He is quoted on their
website as saying, “All of our environmental
problems become easier to solve with fewer people,
and harder – and ultimately impossible to solve with
ever more people.”[4] To say that Sir Attenborough,
who has devoted his life to making us aware of how
we depend on a healthy natural world, is anything but
righteously motivated is deeply offensive.
Cancel Culture is Self-Serving, Not Earth Serving
Comedian Bill Burr in his latest Netflix special
from Red Rocks pokes fun at what he calls ‘wokesters”
saying that the very word “woke” was stolen by Whites
from Black culture wanting to show that they were
down with the struggle. His humorous critique of
cancel culture is well timed. He has a funny bit about
how they are going so far as to cancel celebrities who
have been dead for years. I give this overboard
wokeness regarding the degrowth/ overpopulation
movement the acronym; W-willing to O-ostracize K-
kind E-environmentalists, for I know many and they
are all kind, undeserving of the dismissiveness and
canceling thrown at them. This wokeness disease has
infected many an environmental organization – many
of which are now afraid to address the root cause of
environmental problems and instead are keeping their
focus on the diversity of their boards. The Sierra Club
has been accused of taking money from the oil fracking
industry, and of straying from their mission, but what
really got them in trouble in our current political
climate is their internal staffing struggles.[5]
I need look no further about being canceled than
my own experiences. I have been told I can’t be on
my city’s sustainability commission because I want
to focus on how development is something we should
stop attracting. I have been asked to not join a newly
formed national alternative environmental group
because of my focus on this issue. I have been
uninvited to national conferences put on by ecological
societies because I have been deemed an
overpopulation pariah and they wish to wash their
hands of my kind.
As comedian Dana Carvey’s Church Lady
character would say, “Isn’t that special!” or more
appropriately, “How conveeeenient.” If our intentions
as overpopulation activists are deemed nefarious, no
one has to listen or accept blame for things going
south so quickly. The truth is, if we were truly anti-
human and racist our best approach to this issue
would be to remain silent and just watch the
continued collapse of all we hold dear. Collapse will
always find the marginalized first. They are already
living in the valleys which will become flooded and
have the least economic resilience.
Fuzzy Math and Exponential Growth
Overpopulation is a steam roller which does its
damage without attracting much attention. Exponential
growth on a limited planet to the tune of 80 million
more passengers a year, translated to 220,000 every day
is a ticking time bomb and to do nothing is actually the
most effective way to allow the devastation to continue.
Many often say that population rates are declining
globally and therefore anyone raising this issue must
be using it to dismiss people of color. But percentage
rates are misleading. Just a 1% growth rate on 7.8
billion people represents 78 million additional
consumers each year, which is approximately our
current rate of global population increase. A bigger
percentage say 3% on 2 billion would be 60 million
additional people, so the rate is totally dependent on
the amount of people already here. Population rates
vary around the world and rates of increase are
relative to the base number.[6] The current volume of
people is so large that a reduction in the rate of growth
is not a cause for celebration for as we near 8 billion
even a smaller growth rate remains harmful.
Using Overconsumption as an Excuse for Inaction
The racial spin some critics love to toss our way
is to claim that Americans should be focused on their
own overconsumption and not tell other countries
what to do because that is like having white people
tell black people how many children to have. In a
racist world the optics are admittedly initially
distasteful. But dig a bit deeper and one discovers that
while overconsumption happens on an embarrassing
level here in the US, whether or not Jeff Bezos buys
another yacht for his other yachts, will not determine
whether residents of Cape Town, South Africa will
have enough water to drink tomorrow. The guilty
party is their growth of approximately 4 million
residents since 1950.[7]
Florence Blondel would also beg to differ. This
overpopulation activist is from Uganda and knows
how much overpopulation is setting back her people.
She is stunned when mostly white social justice
warriors get upset when lowering birth rates in
African countries is brought up. “I am irked when
organizations ignore talking about population or
when they talk about it and totally misunderstand
what it’s all about. I do not like when most assume
that in low-income countries, or Sub-Saharan Africa
(SSA) in particular, where I am from, people do not
mind the continuous unprecedented upsurge in
numbers. Most people fighting against the discussion,
especially people living in countries with high-
income, make excuses like that’s racist, eugenics, etc.
I find the racist point an annoyance. What’s racist
about it? Have you been to our countries? Have you
been to the rural areas which make up most of the
countries? Have you smelt the stinking poverty and
hunger? Noticed children hanging around their
mothers hungry? Found a household with about 5
children under 5 years and another in the womb –
with oldest girls married off at 13?”[8]
It is both arrogant and unproductive to think that
we cannot offer to help people with their struggles in
ways that have been proven with tools we already
possess. Poverty reduction was the goal when
restaurant owner Mechai Viravaidya, nicknamed the
Condom King, started a successful family planning
campaign in Thailand in 1974. Their national
campaign had a slogan, “the more children, the
poorer”. They also used humor and lots of
governmental support for education. While each
country must have its programs tailor-made to fit its
culture, he advised that using humor is a great tool. At
his restaurants, he had a sign that said: “Sorry we are
out of breath mints, please take a condom instead.”[9]
In today’s politically correct climate I am not sure
the efforts of Thailand would be applauded as much
as they were in the past. Going from a fertility rate of
an average of 6 children per woman to 1.5 allowed
Thailand to become a more economically secure
nation is a win for all, but nowadays someone
somewhere is going to find a way to spin it as an act
of coercion.
Our Troubled Future with Wokeness at the Wheel
Today we are more likely to look at downstream
solutions for our environment and economic woes.
This safer space for dialogue does little to improve our
world. Rooftop gardens got some press last year
(2021) because they offer jobs and cooler cities in
Cairo, Egypt and Dhaka, Bangladesh. It’s a feel-good
story about using rooftops to grow food and offset
oppressive heat. Not a word is mentioned about how
they are such overpopulated countries and how
working on population has to be included in the
solution. Bangladesh is smaller in area than Wisconsin
(5.8 million people) but has a population of 165
million. The city they are referring to, Dhaka, has over
22.5 million people which is the equivalent of 5 cities
the size of Los Angeles crammed together.[10]
The president of Nigeria is very alarmed about
Nigeria’s population growth rate. Why would
Nigerians want to reduce their own birth rates? Won’t
changing consumption habits in the US help the
quality of life in the fastest-growing African nation?
No, it will not, not enough and not fast enough. He
knows that their high fertility rates are harming
women and everyone’s quality of life. He’s a Nigerian
who cares about his country, just like the rest of us
who so clearly see the connection between human
numbers and the quality of life. Earlier this year
(2022) President Muhammadu Buhari initiated a new
population policy for this north African country with
the highest fertility rate on the entire continent. In a
speech he said:
“The policy emphasizes the urgency to
address Nigeria’s sustained high fertility rate,
through expanding access to modern family
planning, counselling and commodities as
well as promote births spacing. This will
enable Nigeria to achieve rapid fertility
control, improve the health of women,
adolescents, newborns and children, and other
population groups. These levels have
implications for sustained population growth
and narrowed prospects to achieving
population management, facilitating sufficient
demographic transition, harnessing our
demographic endowment and eventually
realizing sustainable development,”[11]
Good leaders can do the math. More than 72% of
Nigerians are below the age of 30 while half of their
female population are between 15-49 years. His focus
on reducing their overpopulation problem reflects his
deep concern for the future of his country.[12]
In a 2014 survey, the Pew Research Center
discovered something interesting. “Asked whether or
not the growing world population will be a major
problem, 59% of Americans agreed it will strain the
planet’s natural resources, while 82% of U.S.-based
members of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science said the same.”[13]
So according to the theory that overpopulation is
an issue for only those who don’t care about people,
we could draw from this research that scientists are
more heartless than the rest of us. Of course, this is
ridiculous. The only reason to be alarmed is because
you care about the disaster that awaits humanity in an
overpopulated and growing world. The conclusions
that can be drawn are that the general public is not as
concerned because they have been sheltered from
honest discourse about this topic ever since the
Rockefeller report on the negative effects of US
population growth was shelved by the Nixon
administration under pressure from Catholic
Bishops.[14] In addition, unlike scientists, they are not
as schooled in ecology and its principles of carrying
capacity and the exponential factor.
Paraphrasing Isaac Asimov, the overpopulation
issue operates under its own weather system and is so
detrimental to humanity that the best way to keep it
on track to wipe us and our fellow creatures out is to
do nothing. He points out that at least with nuclear
war we have to do something. We are very busy doing
nothing, and even busier making up reasons why we
can’t have decent, effective policies, many of which
have been in the pipeline for a long time.
Without ecologically and morally justifiable laws
in place to keep us in balance with the resources
needed to survive, we will continue to grow to such
an outrageous population size that conservation
efforts will become increasingly ridiculous. We keep
telling the public to be sure to wash out their peanut
butter jars and shop with reusable bags, meanwhile
we add over 200,000 new customers net gain to
Mother Earth’s limited store each day.
In the US it is becoming ‘green’ window dressing
to put in community gardens and roadside
wildflowers, while we roll out the red carpet for
thousands of new residents. In my city alone, the
Twin City Metro Area of Minnesota in May of 2022,
builders pulled permits to develop 1,529 apartments
and other multi-family housing units which is a 450%
increase just compared to last year. In contrast,
demand for single-family units were down by 18%.[14]
There is no attention paid to the demands
increasing housing density puts on our water supply,
our traffic congestion or the increased need for human
services of all kinds. While we smile at ribbon-cutting
ceremonies these relocated earth customers will be in
the process of draining our already stressed aquifers
and adding to our traffic jams. It makes no sense that
we have ordinances requiring alternate days for
watering lawns while encouraging the addition of
hundreds of new residents each year in arid, drought-
stressed states who will be needing 82 gallons of fresh
water per day just to live a decent modern life. We
must be locally sustainable before we can ever hope
to be globally so.
Fighting Overpopulation is an Act of Social Justice
The time is overdue to call out these social justice
warriors. This is not a personal vendetta; it is about
calling out their story which pushes us towards
redistribution of resources rather than trying to ratchet
down our numbers in order to avert catastrophe.
While that would be a fine goal, writers like Leanne
McNulty take it a step further claiming that to blame
overpopulation for scarcity is a form of eco-fascism.[15]
If you want to help mankind, and prevent
suffering, misery, and early death of humans you can
do many things. You can be against the death penalty,
pedophilia, sex trafficking, the sale of assault
weapons to the public and the promotion of illicit
drugs. You can question the ease with which we go
to war with no game plan for ending the invasions of
sovereign nations. All of these positions reflect my
deeply held values. How is it that I can suddenly
become racist or anti-human by promoting the idea
that overpopulation is killing our future? I can’t
because I am not. I am the opposite of a racist, nor
am I the enemy of all things human. Overpopulation
causes ecocide. It is the unnamed, unblamed enemy
of our present and future. It stresses resources,
eliminates pollinators, adds to our carbon footprint,
creates traffic, obliterates our scenic views, and
overcrowds our cities and parks. Trying to prevent
this collective tragedy is nothing but noble.
We have all seen the photos of trains in India so
overstuffed with passengers. In a span of 10 years,
over 25,000 have fallen off these deathtraps and over
6,000 of these unfortunate souls died.[16]
Do we think we will somehow be protected from
their fate in the developed world? Each year the US
experiences more crowds, more pollution, more
anonymity, less community, and more crime. All of
these conditions are the result of the US population
growing beyond the working capacity of our precious
and irreplaceable resources including our now
mythological wide-open spaces. The real finger
pointing should be at those selling the fallacies that
the US is limitless with much to offer newcomers.
Decay is what lies ahead for a country unwilling to
put its ecological foot down. Yes, we indeed may owe
certain groups a lifeline because of our past or even
current unfair and even evil acts, but we cannot offer
up our country’s future as penance. That lifeline needs
to be in more sustainable forms.
Once we recognize that the US cannot take on the
hundreds of millions who would like to come here,
we can work to help countries with their
overpopulation issues. According to the Population
Institute, the UN projects population of the 48 poorest
countries in the world will double from 850 million
in 2010 to 1.7 billion in 2050. The US, and other
developed nations, cannot take on the world’s poor
and offer them a better life.
The Burden of Large City Living
There are now over 31 cities in the world with
populations of over 10 million and they are projected
to keep increasing in number.[17]
I believe they are not places anyone in the US
would choose to live. Research over and over again
demonstrates that we are happier and healthier when
we live in smaller communities.[18] The Knight
Foundation found that the following criteria were
critical to a citizen’s attachment to their community:
- Basic services – community infrastructure
- Local Economy
- Safety
- Leadership and elected officials
- Aesthetics – physical beauty and green spaces
- Education systems
- Social offerings – opportunities for social interaction and citizen caring
- Openness/welcomeness – how welcoming the community is to different people
- Civic involvement – residents’ commitment to their community through voting or volunteerism
- Social capital – social networks between residents
An article on Nature.com reports that “Increased
overcrowding and population density were associated
with higher levels of loneliness; in contrast, social
inclusivity and contact with nature were associated
with lower levels of loneliness. These associations
remained significant after adjusting for age, gender,
ethnicity, education and occupation.”[19] Overpopulation
is clearly the nemesis of trying to establish quality of
life in our cities.
Our Biosphere Must Be Prioritized if Humanity is to Exist
An article very on point was printed in the
Journal of Future Studies, (Sept. 2020, 25(1): 93–
106). It addressed the motivations of those advocating
to take our foot off the growth pedal. “Environmental
scientists and scholars who point out the danger of
overpopulation do so for two key reasons. The first is
that this is causing ecocide and the extinction of life
on Earth. The second is that the first reason is likely
to lead to famine and war, and the major loss of
human population... Thus, talking about
overpopulation is not anti-human but pro-human.
Population activism seeks to avoid mega-death (both
human and nonhuman). Similarly, it wishes to avoid
a situation where international conflict and war are
increased. The ‘anti-human’ claim thus has no
evidence or logic to support it.”[20]
In my 2015 book, Move Upstream, A Call to
Solve Overpopulation, Freethought House Press, I
invited people to consider the big picture. I did not
tell them to leave their values behind, but to
accomplish them with a wider vision. An upstream
view is to see not only what we are doing but why we
are doing it. If I didn’t care about the biodiversity of
this planet and its capacity to support us, I would take
the George Carlin approach. I would get a lawn chair
and make a big bag of popcorn and just watch the
circling of the drain. I would nod my head and say to
whomever wanted to listen, “What did you expect
when we add millions each year to a country which
already can’t manage to provide for its citizens?” I do
deeply care about this planet and its creatures and so
do my fellow overpopulation activists. I am ready to
go to the mat to challenge those who cannot see
beyond their limited worldview. When their narrative
of shame is examined through the lens of
sustainability it becomes tarnished and is not just
damaging to activists but to the future of those they
think they are trying to protect.
The subtitle of Professor Trevor Hedberg’s 2020
book, The Environmental Impact of Overpopulation
is “The Ethics of Procreation.” Many have already
written about the morality of adding more children
into an overcrowded, resource beleaguered world and
I will site many of them here. They do so from a
standpoint of saving humanity for welcoming in
newcomers to a place which will not support them is
an act of immorality.
The Fair Start Movement[21] is aimed at
overpopulation from the perspective of fairness to the
child being brought into a world that may not be able
to support them. This nonprofit is the poster child for
demonstrating an ethical motivation to reduce births
in the world. Their mission is literally described as
“Child-first family planning means working with
parents before they have kids, helping parents get the
resources they need to give each child a fair start and
promoting smaller, sustainable, and equitable
families. It’s the best way to protect our future, for
ourselves and for the people we love.”
Stop Having Kids, an NGO, reveals a righteous
motivation right in its mission statement, “There’s no
shortage of already existing humans and other
animals in need of safe and loving homes, as well as
so many other forms of support. Let’s minimize our
harm and maximize our goodwill and solidarity with
living beings and the planet.”[22]
But when it comes to lobbing insults and
canceling overpopulation activists you have to give
the biggest trophy to those in the media, the social
justice movement and even the green movement,
population groups among them, who can’t seem to
handle the truth about mass immigration. They treat
those of us who work on this issue as if we had
leprosy. Worse yet as described so well here, they are
great at finding the wrong people to interview,
keeping the myth alive that there is nothing to be won
by restricting immigration. Alice Friedemann the
energy skeptic writes:
“Anyone who wants to limit immigration or
population is portrayed as a racist. Have you
ever seen anyone on TV or in newspapers who
stated their reason for wanting reduced
immigration and population was their concern
over loss of biodiversity, increasing pollution,
declining aquifers, fisheries, forests, energy,
and other resources? And if they were allowed
to speak about environmental issues, they
would still be accused of hiding their REAL
motivation, which was racism. Hell no. Only
hateful racists are interviewed, and their views
linked to eugenics, genocide, and colonialism.
They are portrayed as not trying to curb all
growth, but only that of undesirable people
such as the poor or undesirable races. Many
systems ecologists have estimated that without
fossil fuels, the United States could support at
most 100 million people. The media should
be asking people how we can go from 320
million to 100 million without birth control,
abortion, and limiting immigration.”[23]
Mass immigration’s role in the contribution to
growth from the developing to the developed world is
well documented. According to the PEW Research
Center, “Looking ahead, ...if current demographic
trends continue, future immigrants and their
descendants will be an even bigger source of population
growth. Between 2015 and 2065, they are projected to
account for 88% of the U.S. population increase, or 103
million people, as the nation grows to 441 million.”[24]
These numbers are woefully ignored due to the
assumption that those who are looking at the
overwhelming numbers must have racist intentions.
In fact, the opposite is true. Historically keeping
immigration restrictions in place has helped the Black
community to get and maintain jobs.
A review of Roy Beck’s 2021 book Back of the
Hiring Line, a 200-year history of immigration
surges, employer bias and depression of Black wealth
sums it up this way: “150 years after the end of
slavery and nearly 60 years after passage of the civil
rights laws of the 1960s, average Black household
wealth remains a fraction of the median assets of
other racial, ethnic, and immigrant populations. There
are many reasons, but this book is about one: two
centuries of governmental encouragement of periodic
sustained surges in immigration.”[25]
Many developed countries would be stabilizing
their growth rates if it weren’t for immigration. If
sustainability is truly the goal, then it must be dealt
with within each country as that is where the laws are
made. Climate change is already stressing every
country on earth and overpopulation and its continued
growth just adds fuel to this game-changing fire.
It's Time to Quit Throwing Spears and Start Working Together
To be too anthropocentric is to not be
anthropocentric at all. To focus our efforts to better
the world exclusively on human welfare is to lose
sight of our fragile biosphere. Spend a few minutes
looking at the work the population groups and
individuals are doing and it is easy to see how much
better off we would be if more listened to the anti-
growth call.
Overpopulation activists or anti-growthers, if you
prefer, must address growth in all of its forms, both
locally and globally. Growth is cultivated by high
fertility rates and lack of women’s empowerment,
immigration policies and oligarchic capitalism due to
the way in which a handful of billionaires are running
the country’s economic policies. Those who claim to
have a stake in the social justice of the most
vulnerable would do well to take a few ecology
courses and see that they are setting up a house of
cards which is destined to collapse and fall hardest on
those with the least resiliency. If a better world is truly
desired, it’s time to put down the rhetoric and see that
joining forces is the best strategy going forward.
We don’t need double blind studies to teach us
that hate is easier in an overpopulated world. We can’t
get to know each other as human beings and as
resources get scarcer it’s easier for hate to turn into
violence. When social justice warriors get tired of
slinging arrows and realize they are only
accomplishing the dismantling of the first
amendment, then perhaps they can partner with us,
those who work hard to take our foot off the growth
pedal. To demean and diminish those who work on
overpopulation as racists or ecofascists is antithetical
to the goals of all of us, to make the world a better
more livable, more humane place in which to live.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of NPG, Inc.
Works Cited
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/population-growth-housing-climate-change/629952/
[2] https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-new-founders-america needs?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F2067309-bari-weiss&utm_medium=reader2
[3] https://www.everythingconnects.org/overpopulation-effects.html
[4] https://populationmatters.org
[5] https://theintercept.com/2021/08/19/sierra-club-resignation-internal-report/
[6] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
[7] https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22481/cape-town/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metr
o%20area%20population,a%202.08%25%20increase%20from%202019
[8] https://www.overshootday.org/florence-blondel-population/
[9] https://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/news/ciber-symposium-features-thailands-condom-king-0
[10] https://ideas.ted.com/megacities-rooftop-gardens-reduce-urban-heat-island-effect/
[11] http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/509487-nigeria-launches-revised-population-policy-to-address-high-fertility-rate.html
[12] https://www.populationmedia.org/storytelling/projects#:~:text=PMC%20in%20Nigeria,of%20Life%E2%80%9D)%20in%20Nigeria
[13] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/08/scientists-more-worried-than-public-about-worlds-growing-population/
[14] https://www.startribune.com/apartment-construction-tripled-in-the-twin-cities-during-may/600177958/#:~:text=During%20May%2C%20builders%20pulled%20enough,18%25%20fewer%20than%20last%20year
[15] https://greenisthenewblack.com/opinion-the-overpopulation-myth-example-ecofascism/
[16] https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/deaths-due-to-fall-from-overcrowded-mumbai-local-trains-go-up-reveals-rti/
[17] https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/urbanization/the_worlds_cities_in_2016_data_booklet.pdf
[18] https://knightfoundation.org/sotc/
[19] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03398-2
[20] Washington, Haydn, et al. “Why Do Society and Academia Ignore the ‘Scientists Warning to Humanity’ On Population?” Journal of Futures Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, Sept. 2020, pp. 93–106., https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/vol-25-no-1-september-2020/why-do-society-and-academia-ignore-the-scientists-warning-to-humanity-on-population/.
[21] https://fairstartmovement.org
[22] www.stophavingkids.org
[23] https://energyskeptic.com/2022/why-are-population-immigration-taboo-topics/
[24] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wave-brings-59-million-to-u-s-driving-population-growth-and-change-through-2065/
[25] https://www.amazon.com/Back-Hiring-Line-Immigration-Depression/dp/1737954702
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Karen I. Shragg, Ed.d., is the author of the book Change Our Stories, Change Our World (2020) as well as Move
Upstream, A Call to Solve Overpopulation (2015), both published by Freethought House Press. She is on the board of directors
of CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization) and SEPS (Scientists and Environmentalists for Population Stabilization).
She is also on the advisory board of Earth Overshoot.org and was on the advisory board of World Population Balance for over 20
years under the guidance of its founder David Paxson. Her latest talk is directed to conservation groups and is entitled, "Sprawling
Over America, Why the Endangered Species Act Isn't Enough". Her undergraduate and graduate degrees are in education. Her
doctorate is from the University of St. Thomas in critical pedagogy. A retired nature center director, she now runs MUSEC LLC
(Move Upstream Environmental Consulting) and can be reached at http://www.movingupstream.com.
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