Select Page

On the global-news scale, there has been one good worldwide story in the past few decades: The seemingly irreversible decline in the world’s population growth rate. As countries become richer and give women more life options, they universally choose to have fewer children and the birth rate plummets. This is happening all over the world and even though it produces lots of problems ) it absolutely must happen if we have any hope of not destroying the planet. As I put it in an earlier post: The Baby Bust is going to be a disaster, and it’s our only hope.

I mention this because of Outside/In, the environmental podcast from NHPR reporter Sam Evans-Brown. Its latest episode tackles the issue of human population in relation to environmental issues. The first episode (listen to it here) looks at the history of the issue, from eugenics to “The Population Bomb” to today’s concerns about the issue. It’s interesting stuff and because Sam is about half my age I think most of it was new to him but for me it was a blast from the past. I remember talking about The Population Bomb in high school when it was pretty new.

Anyway, check it out.

 

Pin It on Pinterest