RECOMMENDATIONS

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These are aimed primarily at the U.S. but certainly have analogues elsewhere.

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The new world, however it unfolds, will undoubtedly look and function differently than the world we know today. As such, these recommendations are aimed at the current political-economic system to create immediate change that can serve as a bridge into that new world. 

"It is intellectually dishonest to talk about saving the environment without stressing the obvious fact that stopping population growth is a necessary condition for sustainability.” - Dr. Albert Bartlett

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"Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases which we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution, but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and the education of the billions who are victims." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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"Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive overpopulation. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. The more people there are, the less one individual matters." - Isaac Asimov

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"Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful if the race was to survive. But now to preserve the race it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation." - Hellen Keller

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"If we don't halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity - and will leave a ravaged world." - Nobel Laureate Henry W. Kendall​

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Humans have controlled population sizes since time immemorial. As sociologist Jack Parsons said, “population control is an ancient institution.” Even cornucopian economist Julian Simon noted that “every tribe known to anthropologists, no matter how ‘primitive,’ has some effective social scheme for controlling the birth rate.”

 

Some of our oldest literary documents, the Babylonian “Atra Hasis” circa 1750 B.C. and the Philippine Code of Sumakwel from 1250 B.C., contain population control policies.

 

Confucius, Plato, the “first city planner” Hippodamus in Greece, the Indian sage Kautilya, the influential Catholic Church figure Tertullian, and even Benjamin Franklin, all spoke of the dangers of overpopulation and the need to manage our numbers – before Malthus ever entered the scene.

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Today’s population sizes – unprecedented in human history – have only been made possible by the unprecedented energy supply from fossil fuels. Two main factors drive the need to reduce our size: 1) the inability of a reduced future energy regime to support our current numbers, and 2) the destructive impact our bloated presence is having on the planet, its non-human inhabitants, and us.

 

A sustainable global population size of roughly one billion or less indicates that populations virtually everywhere need to be reduced. Given our sheer size of eight billion, reductions will take a very long time. A global one-child fertility standard enacted by around 2045 would get us down to roughly 3.5 billion by the end of the century. On the other hand, business as usual will leave us with over 10 billion people by 2100. Our recommendations are made in light of this daunting reality and out of a commitment to reduce suffering.

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A final note on context and language. It can be a common knee-jerk reaction to associate "one-child policy" exclusively with the Chinese policy and its negative aspects. It's important to step away from that singular association and consider the words in their truest, trans-contextual sense. A policy is an overarching plan or goal. Think of a medicare-for-all policy, a minimum wage policy, or an air quality policy. A one-child policy is simply a goal to achieve a one-child fertility standard. What differentiates policies on the same topic is how, exactly, the goal is realized. The world can and should learn from how China implemented their one-child policy in order to do things better – just as it can learn from the dozens of population reduction policies, some very successful, adopted by countries all over the world during the latter half of the 20th century.

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Enact a national one-child policy, encouraging the global community to do the same

 

Make all forms of birth control, including those for men, free and easily accessible (for example, in the case of non-surgical forms, available over the counter without a prescription)

 

Make abortion free and easily accessible

 

Pay women/couples a significant financial incentive to have one child or none

 

Educate the public about the harmful impacts of overpopulation and its central role in our overshoot crisis, shifting from a human-centric view of the world to an inclusive view that honors and respects all life

 

Replace the taboo surrounding population with a moral imperative to make it a front-and-center social topic

 

Provide financial assistance to countries who seek it in order to help enact similar policies

The U.S. has anywhere from 600 to 800 military bases around the world. On any given day, U.S. special operations forces operate in roughly 100 countries. Since the end of WWII, the U.S. and its allies have destructively intervened – militarily, politically, and economically, covertly and overtly – in countless countries around the world to secure power and resources, resulting in death or suffering for hundreds of millions of innocent people.

 

Like overpopulation, U.S. empire is a major barrier to sustainability. It costs hundreds of billions of dollars every year that could be spent on the transformation and improving the lives of everyday people. The destruction and instability it wreaks in other countries makes it less safe and is a huge driver of unsustainable immigration levels. War and endless war preparation destroys the environment and contributes significantly to climate change (if the U.S. military were a country, it would be the 47th largest emitter in the world).

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The conditions for transforming humanely and intelligently to a sustainable world will be squelched on every level so long as we're gripped by war and dominion.

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Close all overseas military bases

 

Cease all overseas military operations

 

Stop military funding and arms sales to foreign countries

 

Close unnecessary domestic military bases

 

Reduce the size of our armed forces

 

Abandon the use of Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs) in exchange for official declarations of war by Congress, as is its constitutional responsibility

 

Dissolve NATO

 

End contracting of military and defense-related products and services to private companies

Unsustainability is a collective problem requiring collective solutions and unprecedented international cooperation. This cannot happen so long as governments serve the interests of the rich and powerful instead of everyday people and the planet. 

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GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS and establish 100% publicly funded elections at all levels of government

 

Enact ranked-choice-voting

 

End voter discrimination laws and constitutional eviscerations

 

Undo gerrymandering

 

Increase voting access (e.g. Automatic Voter Registration in every state, mail-in ballots in every state, national holidays for elections)

 

Ban electronic voting machines

 

Eliminate the Electoral College

 

Establish 100% public funding for the media

Gross income and wealth inequality is a major barrier to sustainability. Socially just, one-Earth living requires mechanisms for fair income redistribution and otherwise sharing the benefits of eco-economic activity.

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Make corporations actually pay their taxes, potentially increasing their rates

 

Shut down overseas tax havens

 

End subsidies to harmful industries

 

Break up monopolies

 

Enact a fairer tax code in which average people pay less and the very wealthy pay more

 

Increase the minimum wage to $25/hour

 

Enact Medicare-for-All

 

Forgive all student loans and make higher education free

 

End the war on drugs, pardon all drug-related offenders in prison, and decriminalize low-level possession of all illegal drugs

 

Issue financial reparations to the African American and Native American communities

Dramatically reducing energy and material consumption means eliminating the financial growth and consolidation imperatives that drive it.

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Put an end to interest-bearing debt

 

Ban the financial markets that “Wall Street” has become a symbol for, allowing instead for community-level capital raising

 

Abolish the Federal Reserve (a private corporation accountable to no one) and absorb its functions back into Congress, as dictated by the Constitution

Consider that one barrel of oil is the energy equivalent of about 10 years of human labor. To supply the average American with his/her economic goods and services requires 6,806 kg of petroleum (~50 barrels) per year. Which means that the average American has about 500 “energy slaves” – mostly fossil fuels – working for him/her around the clock (one energy slave = the energy output of one person).  
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Also consider that there are only about 12 billion hectares of ecologically productive land and water on Earth. For 7.6 billion people, this is about 1.6 global average hectares (gha) of biocapacity per capita. However, humanity is currently consuming about 2.8 gha per capita – 75% more biocapacity than is available given the size of our current population. In other words, humans currently use the equivalent of 1.75 Earth’s worth of resources and assimilative capacity each year. Species can exist in a state of overshoot only temporarily and at a great cost to the ability of ecosystems to provide life support services in perpetuity.

 

The one-Earth lifestyle of 1.6 gha per capita for 7.6 billion people mentioned above equates to the current lifestyle intensity of countries such as Myanmar, Ecuador, Mali, and Nicaragua. By contrast, in 2017, it took over

8 gha to support the average North American lifestyle – meaning Americans and Canadians have overshot their equal share of global biocapacity by a factor of 400%.

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Ban the exploration of new fossil fuel reserves (i.e., oil, shale, gas) and the development of new extraction sites

 

Fine heavily toxic industrial processes

 

Place a tax on companies that extract metals and water

 

Establish phase-outs and bans of trivial or non-essential products, particularly electronics (think leaf blowers, recreational ATVs, Alexa, smartphones, smartwatches, etc.)

 

Offer financial incentives to businesses that source local products

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Ban factory farming

 

Offer significant financial incentives for the conversion of monoculture operations to polyculture regimes that are small-scale, humane, free of fossil fuel inputs, and implement rigorous water conservation methods

 

Provide legal and financial incentives to ensure seed conservation and ban activities that threaten it

 

Invest in sailing ship companies and financially incentivize their use for international transportation

B implementing the Nature Needs Half proposal, which calls for protecting 50% of the planet by 2030 using an ecoregion approach

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Significantly increase funding for ecosystem restoration projects

Engage in the inner transformation that goes hand-in-hand with transforming the outer world, for example:

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Cultivate critical, independent thinking that inoculates against propaganda and manufactured consent

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Question and examine your mental models and change them when confronted with compelling information

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Spend as much time in Nature and connecting with the non-human world as possible

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Develop practices that help you slow down, relax, and connect with the stillness and wisdom within

   

If you're considering starting a family, choose to have one child or none

 

Learn as many self-sufficiency skills as possible and do whatever you can to be as fossil fuel free as possible, whether on a household or community level​

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Engage with actors and institutions within the current system to try to impel change, whether local or national, and/or try to build new systems that can replace them

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Speak openly and honestly with others about the nature of our predicament and what it will take to avert catastrophic collapse