{"id":26433,"date":"2017-10-03T09:01:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T14:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26433"},"modified":"2017-10-03T09:03:37","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T14:03:37","slug":"why-we-must-talk-about-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26433","title":{"rendered":"Why we must talk about population"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Why we must talk about population<\/a><\/h3>\n

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A Response to David Roberts\u2019 Self-Censorship on Overpopulation<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
Reading David Roberts\u2019 recent explanation of why he never writes on overpopulation<\/a>, I felt compelled to reply. While Roberts made a set of superficially convincing arguments, ultimately he\u2019s wrong not to focus directly on the population pressures we\u2019re facing. Not confronting population head-on is like looking out the window of a plane and realizing you\u2019re about to crash but refusing to tell the other passengers about the impending crash. Instead you spend your remaining moments convincing people that it\u2019s \u201cempowering\u201d to wear their seat belts. That it\u2019s a good for their health to put their laptops away and hold their head between their legs. Sure, you\u2019ll convince some\u2014and those you do convince might be better off\u2014but you\u2019ll convince far fewer as the sense of urgency is gone.Reducing the global population is essential in addressing humanity\u2019s impact on the planet\u2014along with reducing overall consumption (affluence) and the use of unsustainable technologies (all variables in the I = PAT equation). And after the missteps of the Sierra Club and some governments, Roberts can be excused for why he feels it may be smarter to simply address the P in the equation indirectly by focusing on women empowerment and providing good access to family planning (and I would add providing comprehensive sexuality education to all children<\/a>, as Mona Kaidbey and Robert Engelman and discuss in EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet<\/i>). But that won\u2019t be enough.<\/p>\n

Stabilizing population is urgent. The goal should not simply be to nudge along a little less growth so population stabilizes at 9 billion rather than 9.5 or 10 billion. Instead, we need to make a long term plan to get population back to a manageable range.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why we must talk about population A Response to David Roberts\u2019 Self-Censorship on Overpopulation Reading David Roberts\u2019 recent explanation of why he never writes on overpopulation, I felt compelled to reply. While Roberts made a set of superficially convincing arguments, ultimately he\u2019s wrong not to focus directly on the population pressures we\u2019re facing. Not confronting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[16281,16162,16282,606,1371,6665,3323,3917],"class_list":["post-26433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-david-roberts","tag-erik-assadourian","tag-family-planning","tag-overpopulation","tag-population","tag-resilience-org","tag-self-censorship","tag-sierra-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26435,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26433\/revisions\/26435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}