Growth profiteers want you to believe growth is making your life better. When the bloom comes off that rose, they want you to believe growth is inevitable. In this episode, Dave debunks a recent newspaper column, Curbing Population Growth is Hard to Do, which seems designed to quell rising public awareness and concern about the unsustainability of continued population growth: “the overall picture is that rapid population growth is a permanent part of life in Colorado.”

Contrary to widespread misassumptions, population growth is NOT inevitable, it’s not beyond our control. We can end public policies that subsidize growth. We can ensure couples are fully informed about overshoot, are free of pronatalist pressure, and are fee to make well-considered, responsible family-size decisions. We can embrace the trend to smaller families. The U.S. can take accountability for its ecological footprint and therefore population size – moving to stop exploiting immigrants, while welcoming refugees.

We can encourage our cities and states to end Ponzi demography, stop competing for population growth, and focus on shrinking their footprints while sustainably meeting the needs of their residents. We can discard those archaic growth-based metrics for success, and start defining and creating a healthy 21st century economy. If I’m elected, we’ll do that at the national level, and I’ll lead the nation in supporting this paradigm shift in all our communities.

Bending the curve, making U.S. and world population peak sooner and contract toward a level that can allow us to restore balance with nature, doesn’t require any coercion or loss of liberty. Everywhere in the world that girls are educated, women have access to family planning and abortion, and women have decision-making power, family sizes go down. More freedom will lead to more freedom.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Curbing Population Growth is Hard to Do – by Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy

https://gazette.com/colorado_politics/curbing-population-growth-is-hard-to-do/article_bdb2ed9e-5d51-11ee-95d4-6f2bb8c87818.html

Follow this podcast for a ringside seat to Dave Gardner’s adventures running for U.S. President. If elected, Dave will declare an ecological overshoot emergency and launch a national project to get the nation out of overshoot. We’ve got a planet to save, and the U.S. should do its part. Learn more, subscribe to campaign updates, volunteer, or donate to the campaign at https://davetheplanet2024.com