OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

Low-fertility alarmism is rampant in many countries. Who is and isn't encouraged to reproduce has always been a question of power in the US. Legal scholar Michele Goodwin traces a disturbing lineage from the forced breeding of enslaved women and the sterilization of primarily poor white women deemed genetically unfit to the very different reproductive choices available to women on the basis of race and class. She reveals how reproductive rights in the Roe era came to focus on abortion rights and failed to address broader reproductive injustices, especially the use of state power to police the wombs of Black and brown women. Highlights include:
How Michele's visits to her relatives in the Deep South of the US in the 1970s, and seeing their lack of basic necessities like clean water or indoor plumbing, heightened her desire to address social injustice;
How US pronatalism up until the Civil War was characterized by promoting reproduction of the enslaved girls and women for the sake of increasing the value of property;
How the practice of 'hypodescent', or the one drop rule, in the US of determining blackness, allowed for the systematic and ongoing rape of Black women, while guaranteeing all their children remain property as slaves;
How following the US Civil War, a fear of newly freed African Americans outnumbering the white population led to the implementation of coercive pronatalist policies pushing reproduction among white women;
Why, with restrictive Jim Crow laws that maintained the low status of African Americans as the servant class, early 20th century eugenics, as marked by forced sterilization laws in the majority of US states, was primarily directed at poor white people deemed genetically unfit;
How both Jim Crow laws and eugenics practices in the US became the primary models for Nazi Germany;
How Michele's travels to India revealed the severe limitations on reproductive freedom of young women, with many resorting to becoming child brides, prostitutes, or gestational surrogates for survival;
How Black women's pregnancies during the half century of Roe V. Wade abortion legality were marked by policing of low-birth weight babies and an assumption of drug use; whereas the mostly white IVF pregnancies and their offspring's low-birth weights were given broad cultural support;  
How the reproductive rights movement in the time of Roe became limited to abortion rights, driven primarily by the needs of white women, while ignoring larger issues plaguing Black women, such as lack of availability of sex education, contraception, and cancer screening.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/michele-goodwin
 
OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance
OVERSHOOT tackles today's interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 
Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance

"There is no alternative" is the story that keeps us trapped in a world that is unraveling. Jeremy Lent, author of Ecocivilization, imagines what becomes possible when we move away from competition, separation, and domination and trust grassroots democracy to build lives rooted in the collaboration, diversity, and mutualism found throughout nature and human history. As disenchantment with the dominant story grows, Jeremy discusses the alternatives already taking root that might provide the foundations for a future ecological civilization. Highlights include:
How the worldview of separation from nature, beginning with sedentary agriculture and accelerating in the modern era, leads humanity to see nature as both a machine and as ripe for exploitation;
How British and northern European elites enclosed and seized the commons, using law and force to dispossess people of their land and push them into wage labor; how this model of enclosure was exported around the world through colonialism; and how enclosure continues today through everything from patented seeds, state and corporate digital surveillance, and AI's enclosure of humanity's knowledge commons;
How cultural hegemony, the cultural conditioning of peoples' mindsets, shapes what people believe is possible - convincing the majority that capitalism, economic growth, and existing systems serve everyone's interests and that we live in 'the best of all possible worlds';
Why an ecological civilization would require moving from the primacy of capital to the recognition that people and other species have a right to flourish, and drawing its principles from life itself - including mutualistic symbiosis, heterogeneity, and diversity;
How governance in ecocivilization should be grounded in subsidiarity and genuine participatory democracy, pushing decisions to the lowest feasible level and replacing today's electoral oligarchy with lottery-selected citizen juries and assemblies that have real-world power;
How the mainstream panic over declining fertility rates reveals the continued cultural hegemony of the 'growth is good' story;
Why, as dominant systems unravel, the emerging alternatives become 'islands of coherence' that attract increasing numbers of people, especially the young, who become disenchanted with the hollow promises of the dominant culture;
Why the ultimate message of the book is the dethronement of TINA - There Is No Alternative - and why the unraveling of the dominant system creates an opportunity to reweave the social tapestry and build alternatives based on how human beings evolved to live, in cooperation with each other and the natural world.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/jeremy-lent-2
 
OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance
OVERSHOOT tackles today's interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 
Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance

The "birthgap crisis" isn't supported by the evidence. Population Balance Executive Director Nandita Bajaj joins childfree researchers Jennifer Watling Neal, Zachary Neal, and podcast host Ricardo Lopes in this republished episode of The Dissenter podcast. They take on the claims made in the film Birthgap, from widespread involuntary childlessness and unmet desires for children to the supposed economic catastrophe of falling fertility. They discuss what the research actually shows about childlessness, family size, aging societies, and pronatalist pressures - and how the Birthgapfacts website is pushing back against the film's misinformation. Highlights include:
Why the claim in Birthgap that 80% of women without children are "childless by circumstance" is unsupported by the evidence, which shows that the vast majority of people without children have chosen not to have them;
Why declining fertility is increasingly driven by people choosing smaller families, including one and two-child families, rather than primarily by growing numbers of people having no children;
What the evidence shows about parents being no happier or more satisfied with their lives than nonparents, and why regret among people who choose to remain childfree is not prevalent;
Why challenging pronatalism does not mean supporting antinatalism, the belief that having children is ethically wrong;
What the evidence says about claims that people want larger families than they are having, and why greater control over fertility generally leads people to choose fewer children;
Why access to contraception and cultural support for its use has a greater impact on fertility than increasing educational access for girls and women;
How pronatalism can be used by nativists who oppose immigration to encourage population growth among racial, ethnic, or religious groups they consider more desirable;
Why measures such as the old-age dependency ratio can overstate the economic burden of aging by overlooking the facts of healthier older populations, increased female labor-force participation, and fewer dependent children;
How a smaller working-age population can benefit younger workers through higher wages, stronger benefits, and better working conditions;
Why population collapse due to declining fertility rates is not imminent and can't be predicted from current trends.  

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/birthgap-debunked
 
OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance
OVERSHOOT tackles today's interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 
Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance

Republished from August 2022. The worldview of human supremacy is driving the human expansionism that is devastating the living world. Philosopher and environmental writer Eileen Crist, author of Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization, offers a compelling alternative - reimagining ourselves as "Earthlings" and creating societies that make space for the flourishing of all life. Highlights include: 
Why the biodiversity crisis is fundamentally a crisis of ongoing and relentless human expansion and results in continued depopulation of the nonhuman world;
How the worldview of human supremacy - the belief that humans are superior to nonhumans and all of nature - is the pervasive and unrecognized force driving human expansionism;
How human expansionism began with the first expanding empires, much earlier than modern capitalism;
Why creating an ecological civilization requires 'scaling down' human activity and 'pulling back' from nature to make space for nonhuman life;
Why plant-based eating is one of the most effective ways of increasing biodiversity;
Why language is critical, and how words like "weed" and "natural resources" distort our relationship to nature;
How we need to regain our indigenous-inspired identity as responsible, interconnected Earthlings;
Why an ecological civilization will be local in terms of living and also globally connected, replacing domination with coexistence in an age of deepening ecological overshoot.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/eileen-crist-2
 
OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance
OVERSHOOT tackles today's interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 
Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance

Humanity is pushing life to the brink. Mathematical ecologist, Corey Bradshaw, explains how our growing population and consumption are driving the depopulation and extinction of countless species while pushing Earth's ecosystems beyond their limits. We explore why overpopulation remains politically taboo, why fears of falling birth rates are misplaced given the evidence of better socioeconomic outcomes in aging societies, and why, although the future will be 'ghastly,' it's still up to us to make it 'less worse.' Highlights include:
How human activities shrink wildlife populations and genetic diversity, making species increasingly vulnerable to extinction through environmental shocks;
Why humanity is likely driving a mass extinction, even though we may never be able to fully measure its scale because most species remain undiscovered;
Why rising wealth and technological efficiencies have resulted in more ecological degradation, not less;
How the evidence is overwhelming that increased human population density is associated with greater biodiversity threats and ecological degradation - as well as declines in human health;
What slowing population growth rates in recent decades reveal about the planet's long-term sustainable human population;
Why fears of low birth rates and aging societies are driven more by economic growth imperatives than by evidence, which shows aging populations enjoy better socioeconomic and health outcomes;
Why discussion of population growth and overpopulation remains taboo across the political spectrum, and even within organizations like the UN Population Fund;
Why Corey is an 'optimistic pessimist' who believes the future will be worse on many objective measures but that it's up to us to make it both less worse and more equitable. 
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/corey-bradshaw
 
OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance
OVERSHOOT tackles today's interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 
Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance