Chasing the Dream: Lifestyle migration, the New Tragedy of the Commons

 Time for getting out of the hustle and bustle. Time to move to where a  more attractive lifestyle is possible. Now that many can work from home, moving to that special dream place is more possible than ever. Our cultural story is dominated by the meme of individual freedom. We operate under the notion that if one has the means to move, one has the right to do so. Not so fast. We need to measure our limits and set our boundaries, at the city, county and state levels as well as national levels. When too many people come to paradise it ceases being a paradise.

People migrate to other cities because they may have lower taxes, better access to open spaces and health care. They move to get closer to family and get away from the cold. People move to simplify their lifestyles or to move closer to amenities. Entire developments are built to attract retirees into warmer climates. Whatever the reason, the moment a particular area gets popular, the trouble begins.

The US has grown by over 138 million people since the first Earth Day tried to warn us about the dangers of overpopulation. But we are once again in D.O.C.-land. We have all heard of people who have O.C.D. well D.O.C., and I just made this up, stands for Delusional & Overpopulation-Clueless. We collectively refuse to acknowledge the dangers of increasing population numbers in a world where so much is sacrificed to growing numbers. Though many have tried to warn us that numbers matter, we keep allowing growth to come to beautiful areas. No matter the intent of the lifestyle migrant, the result when multiplied by thousands, is to rachet down the area’s quality of life. What was once quaint and pristine becomes strip mall after strip mall surrounded by mansion-peppered cul-de-sacs. Gas stations pop up, roads widen and roadkills increase. Demand for the conveniences push economic growth into the constant drone of construction, further destroying the peacefulness these lifestyle migrants seek.

The late professor of physics, Al Bartlett, sardonically once asked, "Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way is aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?" The answer is an emphatic, “NO.”

The greater metro area of Phoenix certainly has not been helped by overpopulation. It is just one of many examples of unsustainable growth in the desert southwest. In 1950, Maricopa County, had fewer than 350,000 people. By 2016, this area which includes Phoenix, grew to a population of more than 4 million. Recently, in just 9 years, it has added over a half million more people. Sunny Arizona attracts many lifestyle migrants because of its dry climate, desert landscapes and many golf courses. But its main sources of water, the Colorado, Salt, and Verde rivers, have not been able to keep up with the demand even with the encouragement of drought tolerant landscaping and use of recycled water. Climate change is sure to bestow even more water scarcity upon millions.

The late Garret Hardin, professor emeritus of human ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara spoke volumes when he pointed out, “When individuals, acting in their own self-interest, exploit a shared, finite resource, it will inevitably lead to the destruction or depletion of that resource, even though it's detrimental to everyone involved.” 

What can be done? First there must be a collective cultural acceptance the negative impacts of overpopulation and the overshoot it causes. Once we accept that there are both ecological and societal limits to growth, laws can follow. We must limit these freedoms of movement based on sustainability. If water is already limited, limiting growth is imperative. Limiting growth is lifesaving. Limiting growth in an already overpopulated country is a matter of survival. Limiting migration both between states and between countries is all about being able to support people’s needs with ever-decreasing resources in the long term.

Sustainability platforms must rule the day. Sustainability laws must be set up to preserve remaining resources. These laws are sensible because survival is sensible. Welcoming more people to resource stressed states it ludicrous. It may meet the requirements of some notions of political correctness, but it never leads to cleaner air, adequate water supplies or preventing more of the feathered and furred to land up on the endangered species list.

Hanging out a ‘No Vacancy” sign at a motel when rooms are full maybe disappointing to someone who needs a room, but the hotel has a right to operate within its capacity. The US has not only a right but a need to set population limits and so does each city and county. It is not malicious. It is just reality when there is no more room at the inn.

GUEST POST BY MY COLLEAGUE FROM AUSTRALIA, MICHAEL BAYLISS The Planet Cannot Hold the Weight of 8.2 billion Narratives. Here’s Why…

Synopsis

As ecosystems collapse and wealth inequality deepens, the impact of overpopulation on the natural world is well-documented—but its effects on democracy, social cohesion, and psychological well-being remain largely unexplored. This essay examines how our bloated, hyper-complex societies have outgrown their ability to meet individual needs, leading to a breakdown in political and social structures.

With 8.2 billion people navigating an increasingly fragmented world, collective narratives have spiralled out of control, fuelled by social media echo chambers and misinformation. The cognitive limits of human connection, as explored by thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari and Jared Diamond, suggest that civilizations struggle to function beyond a certain scale. The modern world has temporarily bridged this gap through technology and propaganda, yet this has only accelerated economic disparity, political disillusionment, and environmental destruction.

As economic instability mounts and the middle class erodes, societies risk turning to simplistic, authoritarian solutions—historically a precursor to fascism and oligarchy. However, the answer lies not in reactionary politics but in systemic change: planned degrowth to scale back unsustainable economies, rewilding to restore ecological balance, and global family planning to address overpopulation in a humane and equitable way.

Ultimately, escaping our current dystopian trajectory requires dismantling our self-absorbed narratives and re-establishing a connection with the natural world. The more of us there are, the harder this becomes—making population sustainability not just an environmental necessity, but a psychological and human rights imperative.

Full Essay

The impacts of human overpopulation on the natural world have been widely studied and intensely debated. We are witnessing its effects firsthand as ecosystems collapse around us. Less examined, however, is how overpopulation influences social values such as democracy, equity, and social organization. Rarer still is the exploration of its psychological and spiritual consequences at both individual and community levels.

In my previous blog post for PMC, "Population Growth and Wealth Inequality Are More Entwined Than We Thought: Here’s Why," I discussed how rapid population growth exacerbates inequality, entrenches overconsumption, and dilutes both democracy and innovation. These areas warrant further study and discussion.

The recent decline in political and social cohesion underscores my concern that our globalized society has grown too vast and complex to adequately meet the diverse and individual needs of 8.2 billion people.

Research suggests there are cognitive limits to the number of social relationships the human brain can sustain. In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari argues that beyond relationships (what is referred to as Dunbar’s number), societies must rely on abstract symbols such as branding, myths, and bureaucracies to maintain cohesion. Similarly, in Collapse, Jared Diamond suggests that civilizations throughout history have ultimately crumbled under the weight of their own size and complexity, unable to adapt to disruption. Sound familiar?

While modern technology has temporarily allowed us to function within an increasingly vast and globalized system, it has done so through the rapid transmission of communication, transactions, and most notably, advertising and propaganda. This has turned most of us into participants in a ‘one size fits all’ deregulated, ever-expanding system that accelerates its own growth while consuming the living world at an ever-faster pace.

For many in the Global North, standards of living have arguably peaked, stagnated, or even declined, at least if we use GDP per capita as a measure. Yet the invisible forces driving our growth-based economy have convinced us that this system is both inevitable and natural, with deregulated, trickle-down economics framed as an unquestionable law of progress.

Unlike the kings and emperors of old, today’s ruling classes have until recently, hidden behind the illusion of democracy. Politicians, funded by billionaires, serve as their public enablers and apologists, while election cycles in most Global North nations force us to choose between two parties offering increasingly indistinguishable policies. Yet the real power remains out of reach, untouched by the ballot box. As their dominance grows more absolute, billionaires have become increasingly brazen—just ask Elon Musk.

This intricate, self-perpetuating system has, until now, been flexible enough to bind together 8 billion people. But several fault lines are beginning to crack. The cost-of-living crisis is one example driven by the natural limits to growth, a speculative economy built on inflated property prices rather than real productivity, and worsening wealth inequality. The result is a hollowing out of society, eroding the middle and working classes. History suggests that such conditions often precede the decline of once-mighty empires.

Before COVID, I believed the political left was winning the ‘culture wars’ but failing the ‘climate wars.’ On principle, I support social justice and equity and recognize that the left has sought to amplify diverse voices and perspectives. However, in practice, the movement has sometimes fostered a culture of censorship. Discussions on population sustainability, for instance, are often met with knee-jerk accusations of ‘ecofascism’ or ‘racism.’ Instead of fostering broader understanding and tolerance, this dynamic has fuelled new ‘us vs. them’ divisions, pushing many working-class conservatives, already disenfranchised by neoliberalism, further away.

Post-COVID, we have witnessed the rise of political diagonalism, a phenomenon Naomi Klein explores in Doppelgänger. She describes a strange alliance between the far right and the alternative wellness community, a ‘mirror world’ whereby conspiracy theories flourish in place of systemic analysis. These narratives are seductive precisely because they simplify complex global crises into digestible hero-villain stories. They provide an easy scapegoat, often liberals or minority groups, allowing followers to deflect both personal responsibility and an honest reckoning with cause and effect.

Now more than ever, critical thinking is essential in distinguishing truth from post-truth. Yet, as education systems erode, particularly in lower socio-economic communities, many are left vulnerable to misinformation, fed a steady diet of sensationalist, oversimplified media. In this climate, disinformation spreads like wildfire, even as the world quite literally burns.

Human societies have always existed within relative truths. Money, economics, hierarchy, even morality, are constructs of our collective subjectivity, shaped through language. Language, while a necessary tool for navigating complexity, becomes dangerous when our egos become entangled in the ephemeral world of narratives. Today, as communities corrode—due in part to austerity and in part to sheer overpopulation we find ourselves increasingly fragmented, living in close quarters yet unable to organize cohesively. As our worlds become more insular, myopic, and self-absorbed, our narratives spin further out of control.

In my experience, the biosphere and the natural world exist (generally speaking) beyond human storytelling. It is the closest thing we have to an objective reality, a physical truth unmoulded by human interpretation. For most of history, the natural world vastly outweighed the human world. Even as civilizations rose and fell, nature provided a grounding force, a check and balance against our self-created illusions. But today, that balance has been obliterated. Wild mammals now account for just 4% of global mammalian biomass. For many, access to the natural world has been reduced to curated, artificial experiences, a trip to the city zoo or a national park, often more about aesthetics and Instagram posts than genuine reconnection.

The ratio of human-made to natural environments has inverted so dramatically that we are now almost entirely subsumed by our own creations. Physically, we are enclosed by sprawling suburbs, towering apartments, and endless urban landscapes. Virtually, we are consumed by screens and social media; an echo chamber of human narratives. With little access to nature, is it any wonder we have entered a post-truth era, where so many feel unmoored and lost?

The psychological scale of this crisis is staggering. How can a globalised society truly address 8.2 billion individual narratives, each with unique needs and grievances? The only common thread seems to be that no one feels fully heard or understood, not even billionaires, who often appear more insecure and unhappy than the rest of us. The more people there are, the more each individual voice is drowned in an ocean of noise. This weight, though intangible is deeply felt. I compare it to Atlas, bearing the literal weight of the world on his shoulders.

No one can sustain this burden alone. In confusion and desperation, many seek simple solutions to complex, unfathomable problems. This is when the temptation arises to rally behind the loudest, angriest figure in the room; the one who projects unshakable confidence and offers the illusion of easy answers. History has shown us where this path leads: fascism, oligarchy, tyranny, scapegoating, and, inevitably, dystopia.

Yet complex problems require complex, multi-layered solutions. There is no single fix, only a collective effort. Our bloated, unsustainable societies must embrace planned degrowth, scaling down economies to levels that do not literally cost the Earth. We must rewild—restoring balance between the human and natural world, reviving biodiversity, and making space for life beyond ourselves. And we must finally confront the population issue with maturity and seriousness. This is not a matter for conspiracy theories or reactionary outrage, it is a fundamental issue of human rights, environmental stability, and long-term well-being. Expanding global access to family planning not only curbs overpopulation but also empowers women, strengthens communities, and fosters economic resilience. In the Global North, choosing to have fewer children has a greater impact on carbon emissions than multiple lifestyle changes combined. A stable or declining population should be seen as a success, not a crisis, regardless of what Elon Musk might claim.

Ultimately, the only way to escape this dystopian spiral is to let go of our self-absorbed narratives and re-establish our relationship with the natural world.  To do means actively working to look for connection and common ground among those we disagree with as a pathway towards constructive discourse. For this reason, new activist movements such as Holistic Activism are becoming increasingly important. However, the more of us there are, the harder this becomes both physically and psychologically. Population sustainability is not just an environmental necessity; it is a human rights imperative and I believe, a psychological one as well.

Population Media Center is one organisation that produces the stories that matter,  educating and empowering people across the world on family planning and reproductive health care.  In an era in which access to reproductive healthcare is being actively threatened, award winning podcasts such as PMC’s  ‘Crossing The Line’ are more essential now than ever.

Rusty Remedies and Sour Solutions

 Dedicated to the living memory of the ever-wise Dr. Al Bartlett, physics professor University of Colorado Boulder.

When we don’t fully comprehend the nature of a given situation, our attempts at solving them fall short. I am coining the definition of a ‘sour solution’ as one that never had a chance to work because it wasn’t based on the principles of physics. ‘Rusty remedies,’ on the other hand, have more potential, but are less viable in an overpopulated world which keeps on growing. I was fortunate to have met the brilliant and bold physics professor, Dr. Al Bartlett and I write this to honor his legacy.

One recommendation for dealing with stress is often to get outdoors and go for a walk in the woods. A frequently suggested remedy for better health is often to drink more water. But in a world where we are a servant to growth, the quality and availability of our outdoor experiences as well as the quality and quantity of our water supply are just rusty remedies. It is like offering a medicine for a disease which has stopped being manufactured.

How do people crowded into high-rises find access to woods where they can go for a walk? In our current situation where climate change threatens consistent rainfalls, where do we find adequate water to increase everyone’s intake? With deregulation as the current trajectory of our political world, how do we ensure that that water will be safe to drink? When do we start paying attention to the physics of the dramatic effect our overpopulated world has on our desire for better health? The desire to make life better for more and more people on a finite, resource-depleted planet is a rusty remedy.

Math is exactly what the late great physics professor Al Bartlett tried to warn us about. From a laundry list of things he could have chosen, including our propensity for war, he said that the greatest human failing was our inability to comprehend the exponential function. What he meant was that we as a society, and a world, operate without acknowledging that as human population grows it does so at an accelerating rate. We act as if we grow at a linear rate where the increase is constant. But we grow exponentially. That is how we have added billions to our planet in such a short amount of time, undermining our attempts to find real solutions for the problems overpopulation creates.

Bartlett also commented on the sour solutions of smart growth verses dumb growth. “Smart growth, or growth that is planned in a certain way, destroys the environment as much as dumb growth but does it with taste,” he said in one of his many popular lectures. He used the Titanic as an example because whether you were in a state room or in steerage, you both ended up at the bottom of the ocean.

Currently there is talk about attracting only the highly educated to our borders. But smart people also use resources, arguably more than those who would be willing to live with their family members for a while, therefore requiring less housing. Smart migrants drink our water, smart migrants crowd our cities, smart migrants encourage the expansion of infrastructure. This story has to play out on the gameboard of growth and limited resources, otherwise we are just moving chess pieces around, playing political games, weaponizing race as a tool and no one wins.

Our perceptions of where we are now with a world losing so much of its wildness and the creatures that live there, must change. We must acknowledge the extraordinary unsustainable pressure of what welcoming more people to this world (and to our country where we can control it) is doing to the very things we need to survive.

It’s been said many times that overpopulation is responsible for everything from road rage to other dysfunctional behaviors, but it is also responsible for keeping us away from any real solutions to our problems. When each of us already uses on average about 82 gallons of water each day, we must get our calculators or Google how much that is multiplied by how many people are in the US. In a country of 350+ million Americans, that equals a demand of 28,780,000,000 gallons of fresh water a day from our ailing aquifers and rivers. When we allow our country to keep growing its population in an already compromised world, we are inviting the kind of disaster which technology cannot solve.We are so disconnected from our ecological parameters that some even suggest moving people to desert areas where there is no water. Others suggest building up, not out, so that more people are added to specific water sources and dump more cars onto our already crowded streets creating more traffic jams. Sour solutions abound.

We need to take a hard look in the exponential mirror. Bartlett was right. This is our greatest failing. It surpasses even the atrocities of war and authoritarian governance, for it operates with an even deeper, often silent ruthlessness.

By ignoring the exponential function and operating as if resources were unlimited, we have allowed the global population to expand to over 8 billion while the US population now sits precariously at over 350,000,000. What is even more alarming is that we have grown so much during a century when we fought so many bloody wars. In the 20th century the wars took a toll of 231 million people globally. Yet we still managed to grow by the billions. The global population was only 1.6 billion in 1900 and now is still growing at 8.1 billion. Similarly, the US was just over 76 million in 1900 and now is at 350 million according to the Congressional budget office. For reference, when I graduated high school the US population was just over 209 million. US resources of water, open space, energy and all that is needed to support modern human life cannot keep pace with the addition of 141 million people in just over 50 years.

We can and should continue to fund global family planning efforts but at the end of the day it has been generally underfunded, culturally unwelcomed and a weak tool in the long run. The only way to stop growth is to address it locally within our local watersheds and with rules that are enforceable by one political entity. True, this overall won't reduce the total number of people in the world, but that is not where this story unfolds, it unfolds within the political reach of each country. Every country must understand that the most humane thing to do for its own people is to grasp the ramifications of the exponential function. In the US, we can do it legally and fairly and for the right reasons. Proposals currently on the doorsteps of our legislators could do just that for most developed nations are growing by immigration, not by birthrates. Instead of demonizing anything that controls mass immigration as unfair, we need to reframe that story into one of sustainability and fairness to current citizens and their quality of life. Two bills before Congress now include the following:

• H.R. 251 would crack down on illegal hiring by mandating E-Verify, the free online system that verifies the work authorization of new hires. Nearly a billion adults worldwide want to move to the United States. Many of them will try illegally as long as they think the U.S. turns a blind eye to illegal hiring.

• H.R. 1241 would end the visa lottery, a program that grants over 50,000 green cards every year by a random, computerized lottery.

 These two modest reforms are popular and ere among the recommendations of the last bipartisan U.S. commission on immigration reform.  Passing them alone would not achieve sustainable immigration levels, but they would give us a good start.  Our dialogue about growth must include sensible legislation so that we may be on a path to real solutions.

As Bartlett would have asked in his sarcastic way, “Can you think of a resource we need as top predators need, that has kept up with our exponential rise in numbers?” Well, we have seen an exponential rise in more gadgets headed for our landfills, but we can live without those, we just haven’t figured out a way to live without water, food or shelter or find a way to have them grow exponentially along with us.

Every solution offered to remedy the ailing problems of mankind takes resources and if we continue to ignore the problem of exponential growth, they will all sour like curdled milk left on the doorstep of an ever-warming world.

Stopping Growth Saves Lives: Why Population Limits are Necessary For a Better Future

Stopping Growth Saves Lives:

Why Population Limits are Necessary For a Better Future

Overpopulation oppresses people. It causes misery, suffering, and early death.  Both sides of the political spectrum should be able to agree – government programs should not lead to oppressive living conditions.  But these conditions persist, exacerbated by too much population growth – congested highways, water bans, high housing prices, and crowding in general.

The weight of not being in control of any given situation caused by too much demand of a limited resource is oppressive. Overpopulation causes oppression because once there are too many people in a region, the pressure of exceeding limits begins. Clogged freeways, lines at airports, water bans, the escalation of endangered wildlife and even high housing prices are all put in place when overpopulation rears its ugly head.

The simple definition of overpopulation is when population density exceeds an area’s carrying capacity and results in environmental deterioration, an impaired quality of life, or a population crash.  Resiliency to extreme circumstances is lost when an area becomes overpopulated. As our nation becomes more and more densely-populated, Americans need to grasp the relationship between overpopulation and the oppressive conditions it creates around us.

Rugged individualism and freedom of choice are a deep part of the cultural infrastructure of our country. Unlike East Asian cultures where collectivist thinking is of highest value, here in the U.S. we cherish having individual choice. But individualism erodes away as we allow overpopulation to control our daily lives. The ever-wise late comedian George Carlin talked about we have the illusion of choice. We can choose from 35 kinds of shampoo or 300 kinds of sugary cereals. But when it comes to life’s important decisions, they allude us. We have no real choice when it comes to choosing to live in uncrowded places, or drive the speed limit in our large cities, thanks to an already overpopulated country of some 345 million.

The LA fires illustrated the ruin that can result when population growth overwhelms an area’s carrying capacity. Clearly, the burned-out neighborhoods of LA were too densely populated – they were overpopulated. Not only were homes built in fire zones they only had narrow roads to use as escape routes. The other day, NPR exposed their pro-growth bias.  When describing the LA neighborhoods facing the specter of rebuilding, the commentator said that “limiting housing is tough when there’s a housing shortage.”  That’s one interpretation.  It would have more accurate if she said, “…limiting housing is tough in such an overpopulated area.”

As the LA fires demonstrated, when we cram too many people into areas by building housing to meet the relentless demand of growth, we can exceed natural limits and put people in danger. As is true with most natural “catastrophes,” population growth can push people into harm’s way when housing expands into marginal lands (e.g., flood zones, steep hillsides, fire prone or hurricane prone terrain) which are inherently hazardous. This also is true when communities sprawl across arid land, except that running out of water happens more gradually than let’s say a landslide. 

The continuous loss of wild species continues to raise the alarm. When we keep worshipping growth over sustainability it becomes a force that is killing off our wildlife and our ability to live within the boundaries of our fragile ecosystems. Promoting growth is the ultimate creator of misery and suffering. Chasing demand with solutions which are not going to solve our long-term problems is a fool’s errand. We keep building more housing, more roads, more of everything that requires the earth’s limited resources, and we are doing it in areas which can barely sustain a limited demand let alone a large one.  Because we are overpopulated, we build on mountain sides and in arid regions. We build in windy areas and on top of known earthquake zones.

 In Nathanial Gronewold’s recent Negative Population Growth’s Forum Paper, he points out that we are knowingly building in areas vulnerable to the ravages of climate change. Continuing in our old patterns of promoting growth with our policies and tax laws makes no sense in 2025 when the dangerous combination of overpopulation and climate change are knocking on our door. We should be building resilience instead of housing especially in vulnerable areas.

We need to see the multiplier effect of population growth is causing a never-ending litany of disasters, increasing in frequency, size, and death tolls. The real culprit is right before our eyes if we choose to lift our blinders and say it proud and out loud. To fight overpopulation with tough zoning laws that limit growth and rational immigration policies intended to stop our relentless population growth would be life-saving.

We need laws that govern the number of people who can live in a given area, while maintaining resiliency. This includes safeguarding adequate water supplies, along with wildlife habitat up and down the food chain. We cannot continue to pretend that future generations will be fine and that we care about saving lives while allowing life-threatening growth to continue.

Misdiagnosed America: How to Get the Right Prescription for a Better Country

Recently I have become aware of several people in my life who have been misdiagnosed. Each had an illness far more serious than the medical experts told them they had. This put their lives at grave risk as their doctors handed out a prescription for a disease they didn’t have.

 The story we blindly accept is that the people put in charge of our health will lead us in the right direction. This is a metaphor for what is going on in our country today. The story we collectively believe is that we have unlimited resources to meet the unrelenting demand brought about by more and more people.

On top of that is yet another newer misdiagnosis, that we are facing a crisis due to birth dearth or depopulation. This cannot possibly be true in our already overpopulated country. The startling loss of biodiversity we are experiencing and the water scarcity looming over our heads are not symptoms of too few people. When many drivers in Los Angeles switched over to electric cars, they did nothing to solve their horrendous traffic problems, because they still have the same (and always growing) number of drivers using the overloaded freeways.

When we are faced with a misdiagnosis of a problem, we must first follow the money. In the case of our health care in the US it is based on a for-profit system. Taking short cuts in our care saves money for shareholders. The health care system isn’t looking for ways to deliver better healthcare, as much as it is looking for ways to send more money to its shareholders. So, they keep sending us to virtual appointments, and delegating more minor medical procedures to Minute Clinics housed in department stores and pharmacies.

Who benefits when more people are jammed into the US? That would be the capitalists who see numbers as an asset to their profit margins. The more people, the more consumers of housing, processed food and trinkets. Who has the money to advertise this misdiagnosis? Those same capitalists who are now filling their airwaves with the doom and gloom of depopulation nonsense. There is plenty of doom and gloom to go around, but it is not from depopulation, but rather from overpopulation. This is the ‘o’ word that those in power hate, shun and deny. Those with the power try to teach us and tell us what is happening, but they are misguiding us, and we must start listening with a more cynical ear. Those recently elected focused on illegal immigration, but they don’t care if we keep growing with legal immigration. Of course, it’s important to have laws obeyed and all applicants to the US vetted, but when we are already stressing our infrastructure and ecological limits, that extra paperwork doesn’t add up to a more sustainable country.

We need to take several steps back and realize what we know intuitively -- that we cannot keep growing at high rates of consumption in places with limited resources. We know that much of the western US is already experiencing water scarcity and that, without major sacrifices (e.g., loss of irrigated farmland, huge infrastructure costs for potable water, devastation to aquatic ecosystems), those landscapes cannot support more people. We know we do not want to imitate other countries where their citizens are stuck in cramped high rises and dilapidated slums. We know why Sun Country doesn’t offer vacation trips to Bangladesh which struggles to survive at 174 million in a country smaller than Wisconsin. We know we too could easily become a destitute country if we aren’t careful.

Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens, and history professor at Hebrew University, has much to say about how the larger we are the more fragile (i.e., less resilient) we become in our globalized world. As the US increases its size, it is also increasing its dependency on longer food and product supply chains. In a world of growing instability due to climate change, becoming more fragile is the wrong direction.

Harari also talks about how we are held together by stories. These are fictional stories in the sense that they do not rely on physics. One of his favorite examples is money. Money is a fictional story because it has no physical value. We cannot eat it or drink it. We must all agree on its value as a currency so that we may exchange it for items that have real value.

The trouble with the story of overpopulation is that it is a non-fictional story based on physics. The physical world has rules which we keep breaking, much to our own peril. Fictional stories, have power because we collectively agree that they are true, regardless of scientific proof. Joseph Campbell wrote about this in his book, The Power of Myth. Myths are the stories we tell ourselves so that we can better navigate life, death, and all of its complexities. Our myths make sense of life and give us reasons that things happen even when there is no real proof that those reasons are true. The story that the US is manifesting problems due to overpopulation does not connect with any of our current myths and is therefore not a part of public discourse certainly nothing you would hear about on the evening news.

We would be much better off giving power and attention to the nonfictional story that the natural world, made up of our oceans, forests, and rivers can only handle so much waste and so much demand. We collectively keep agreeing with the misdiagnosis that we are fine with continued growth in a limited world. We are attached to the myth of prosperity and the happiness it will bring to our millions and billions. This prevents us from wrestling with the problems served up on a platter labeled, ‘the physics of ecology.’ Occasionally when the nonfiction-based overpopulation story comes to the surface, technology is frequently offered up as the answer. But technology is also a fictional story we tell ourselves, for it requires energy and creates waste. If a magical form of non-polluting, non-fossil fuel-based energy were to be invented it would do two things; it would encourage even more growth on our limited planet and it would not solve the multiple needs humans have for food, water, and shelter as well as jobs and infrastructure. The developed nations have a higher demand for limited resources (e.g., fresh water) which means they are destined to use them up faster. We must retire our myths of the endless possibilities for growth in the US and adopt ones that are grounded in physics.

Fortunately, some of this story is starting to show signs of cracking. The relentless pressure of mass immigration is beginning to wear down the fictional story that evermore people will somehow strengthen America and improve our quality of life. The 2024 election may have turned towards a Republican win partly because they were able to capture the nonfictional narrative against the Democrats and their immigration failures.

The accepted story is that if one is against mass immigration at this moment in our history, then one doesn’t care about those in need, but that is just another misdiagnosis. We need an alternative narrative about immigration which states emphatically that caring about reducing mass immigration is a symptom of something noble. It means that we care about the land that is getting spoiled, the cities that are being overrun, the budgets that neglect those who have been here for generations, and instead help those who have just arrived. Yes, we are a “nation of immigrants,” but generations of established immigrants are in danger of sacrificing their well-being to the unrelenting push against real physical limits that cannot be helped by technology.

The correct diagnosis is that the US is suffering from overpopulation. We aren’t suffering because we have too few widgets to improve our lives. We aren’t experiencing a mass die-off of our birds, mammals, and insects because our numbers are too low. We aren’t living with constant construction and traffic jams because we lack more people applying for jobs and student loans. We are suffering because we have attached ourselves to the unsustainable story of eternal growth in a limited system.  

The prescription of less is the only cure for this problem. Less of us will allow the patient to begin to recover. The US is in the emergency room. It needs the best medical advice so that it can begin to recover land for its wildlife, open space for our sanity, and the ability to have enough resources for those already within our borders. We must get this diagnosis right. For it will allow us to fill the right prescription and begin to cure our real disease.

Before the Sun Sets

Before the sun sets on one more day, let's quit calling the daily onslaught of mass shootings and murder suicides as isolated incidents of violence. Collectively that's how we solve our problems. We are a violent country. We love violent movies, we play violent video games, we read books about murder mysteries. Our TV viewing is dominated by crime shows, some of which have been entertaining our insatiable appetite for violent crimes for decades. The largest part of our budget is the Pentagon's. Violence is profitable. A whopping 16.7 million firearms were sold in the US in 2023, so violence is great for business.

We love might more than peace, we love conquering more than discussion. If we really want to change this culture of violence in the US we have to get serious about teaching in our homes, schools and places of worship that violent 'answers' to problems only creates more pain and more problems. We have to stop idolizing those who wear their weaponry with prowess and pride. We have to pay attention to why people, especially our young people are in so much agony that death becomes a viable solution. We need to offer them more peaceful answers to their problems. We need to quit making more and more room for population growth which breeds the kind of anonymous neighbors who don't take care of each other, let alone know what is going on in their lives.
And for goodness sake we have to quit offering thoughts and prayers as our only response when there have been 488 mass shootings in 2024 so far, but don't worry we have more time to add to that horrific score. 

Celebrating Wilderness in Overpopulated TimES

I was reflecting that World Wilderness Day is October 23rd. What does that mean in an overpopulated world now exceeding 8 billion? What does that mean in the US with a population still growing at 366 million? Wilderness is a concept of ‘untrammeled land’ as designated by the Wilderness Act of 1964. In doing so the US congress could protect lands from encroachment by human development, a good move to protect wildlife and scenic beauty but psychologically it sealed the deal that wilderness was separate from us. Wilderness areas are romanticized in the psyche of outdoor loving people as a motivation to keep in shape so that long and strenuous hikes may happen bringing one close to nature. We go there to visit, we don’t live there and when we are not there, we do not see its threats which include human sprawl, pipelines, mining and the buying of water rights by corporate interests.

 Protected wild and beautiful areas do much to preserve the integrity of beauty, watersheds and wildlife. But how protected are they with continued population growth? The ever-present sprawl spurred on by the main way US population is growing, mass immigration, is an infection growing near wilderness areas in our country. Growing populations of people want to live near beautiful places, but bring with them the conveniences of modern civilization in the form of shopping areas, larger roadways and the noise that accompanies these elevated numbers. https://sprawlusa.com/

In another perspective, all designated wilderness areas were home and holy to the many tribal people who lived here prior to 1492. Native peoples don’t even have a word for wilderness because that was their home, and still is their homeland. The 574 federally recognized tribes in the US are still the best stewards of these homelands as they can see first-hand what is being done to them by corporate interests.

 Many tribal nations are fiercely fighting for their lands, but they will be no match for how climate change is going to make more land available for agriculture as the tundra warms and human population expands. Wilderness areas will likely succumb to the need to feed expanded human populations as northern areas thaw and become easier to convert into farmland. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/october/worlds-last-untouched-wildernesses-risk-becoming-farmland.html

 So on this International Wilderness Day let’s reflect on its value and what actually threatens its existence, our inability to reign in our population and its expansion into its integrity.

Fighting the Right Battle to Save Wild and Sacred Lands

By Henry L. Barbaro and Karen I. Shragg

From all across our nation, we keep hearing about the struggles to preserve cherished open spaces, e.g., wilderness, scenic areas, and sacred lands of America’s tribal nations. People are fighting all kinds of land development projects, such as housing complexes, highways, pipelines, mines, airports, and energy facilities. But these open space activists never seem to identify the driving force behind all of these threats -- our ever-growing population, which relentlessly undermines any effort to preserve open spaces, today and for the foreseeable future.

A consistent source of open space activism comes from Indigenous nations.  Tribal bands from all over the Americas are fighting to keep their ancestral lands sovereign and free from encroachment. These lands are sacred because of their historical and spiritual significance.  In the U.S., many tribal bands have opposed a variety of development projects, including the Standing Rock Sioux tribe fighting against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa fighting against the “Line 5” pipeline, among many others.  These battles have been waged in a piecemeal fashion, and have focused on the risk of environmental impacts.  Adding an arrow from the quiver of “perpetual unsustainable growth and overpopulation” would help their cause.

 What are the numbers telling us?  Our native birth rates are not adding to the pressures to develop open spaces.  In recent decades, immigration has become the primary driver of our nation’s population growth.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, our population will soar by 50 million in the next 35 years, with 90% due to immigration.  This adds up to the consumption of massive amounts of non-renewable open spaces.

But in a society whose leaders and most citizens revere constant growth -- including population growth – the seemingly non-tangible reasons for opposing development (which serves the demands of an expanding population) can become an aesthetic rather than a practical argument. Those who say we need more housing and energy have louder voices and more clout than those who champion sacred lands and wild places.

 Yet the anti-growth argument is strengthened by the fact that eternal growth is not sustainable. By accepting the millions of additional residents streaming into the US, our nation also is experiencing resource shortages (e.g., drinking water, productive farmland) and diminished resiliency (e.g., floods, fires, droughts). But none of these open space champions are putting growth in the center of their target. That is why all of these fights are so piecemeal and, ultimately, ineffective.

The policies that permit growth in the US

In population terms, America’s growth rate is higher than any other industrialized country in the world.  This can mostly be attributed to our nation having the most permissive immigration policies (by far), along with the lack of meaningful enforcement of existing immigration laws. Alas, Americans always have assumed that our federal government would do the right thing in terms of competently managing our nation’s immigration program.

 There’s another factor at play – America’s paradigm of eternal growth, which advocates for constant population growth to keep our economy going, to fill job openings, to “compete on the world stage,” to pay for Social Security, to support the elderly, etc.  Still, we know deep down that this economic “Ponzi scheme” cannot continue indefinitely – conditions change, shortages arise.  The question is not whether America will hit the limit to its growth, but when, and how bad will our quality-of-life get before critical shortages lead to a crisis?

 All concerned Americans need to join forces

 America has a wide range of “conservation lands,” designated as national wildlife refuges, forests, preserves, parks, monuments, and wilderness.  Except for national wildlife refuges and wilderness areas, roads are generally allowed and, except for national forests, commercial operations such as mining or logging, generally are prohibited (unless grandfathered). In addition to protecting a wide range of biological processes (e.g., wildlife habitat) and healthy ecosystems (e.g., watershed protection), these areas also preserve aesthetic and cultural qualities, such as scenic landscapes (e.g., ridgelines, canyons).  Conservation areas therefore have values that go well beyond whatever commodities they could provide in the future.

Due to America’s persistent population growth, there is growing pressure to extract minerals and timber, raise livestock, and build highways and housing.  It’s not hard to imagine the rules regulating these natural areas someday being liberalized to respond to the demands of a growing population.

As America's population grows (driven by government immigration policies), so too will our need for more natural resources (water, natural gas, oil, minerals, metals, wood).  Even “green” energy requires lots of mining (e.g., quartz/sand for the solar panel glass, copper for the electricity transmission, and lithium for electricity storage).  Indeed, the green-energy industry is very land-intensive.  Instead of pipelines, there will need to be more transmission lines.  A medium-sized solar farm can require 30-40 acres, and offshore wind farms require the industrialization of sensitive coastal areas.  Scenic ridgelines, which can have higher wind speeds, are too often festooned with wind turbines.

With America’s population expanding onto our remaining natural areas (and Indian reservations), the number of land use conflicts also has been increasing, with one side trying to satiate the demands from constant growth while the other side fights to preserve their spiritual and psycho-emotional connection to the natural landscape.  Urban sprawl will continue to negatively affect forests and wilderness through habitat reduction and fragmentation, loss of biodiversity and ecological integrity, and increased fire hazards (from people and power lines).

 Today’s trend is for more and more people to escape high-density states and cities, and move to lands surrounding conservation areas.  As more people seek the solace of “big nature,” these special areas paradoxically are being “loved to death” with housing and highways.

Perpetual growth leads to permanent losses

 Growth and development almost always cause permanent changes to the landscape.  Once a sacred area is degraded/desecrated, then it doesn’t come back.  Tragically, future generations will never witness its grandeur, beauty, peace, and/or whatever intrinsic yet intangible value the land once had.

 Scenic/aesthetic/cultural areas continue to be marred with the infrastructure of America's burgeoning population. What will our generation bequeath to future generations? Will they be able to hike to a scenic overlook and gaze upon an unbroken landscape that looks like it did thousands of years ago? Or will they see housing, roads, transmission lines, wind turbines, and/or timber operations, along with skies buzzing from passenger jets and crisscrossed with contrails? Will indigenous peoples still be able to conduct their ceremonies in the private stillness of their ancestral land or will they be surrounded by mining operations and condominiums?

 There is a fundamental reason that those who care about wildlands will never be able to relax and hang up their activist hats. Unless open space activists unite behind stopping America’s perpetual population growth, the ruinous march of development will not stop.

Overpopulation and the Common Good

So many touching stories, so many good feeling promises, so antithetical to the return of the dark ages promised by Project 2025. That is the difference between the speeches at the Democratic National Convention, held in August in Chicago, and the lies and angry energy and name-calling being spewed by the other side.

Everyone having access to health care and kids getting fed at school so they can learn better. Old barriers of misogyny and racism being torn down and stepped over. The common good was the common thread from Oprah to Obama, from Walz to Harris. They made it clear, this is the team that must win unless we want to suffer under the policies of a world where social security becomes ancient history, abortion is paired with jail time and billionaires rule the world more than they already do.

 But the common good is not only a story about fairness and kindness it is a story about the commons itself. Decades ago, biologist Garrett Hardin wrote his essay called, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Hardin refers to the commons as what we all share in a given society. Because resources cannot keep up with exponential human growth, widespread reduction in all we hold dear will inevitably be threatened. The commons and the common good are both determined by recognizing that we have limits and that sustainability matters. The common good is served when we match what the earth can produce for us without damage to its wild world, the world that forms aquifers, generates pollinators, and allows our rivers to run free. The common good is served when we can move from place to place without cursing traffic or waiting in long lines.

I will not apologize for trying to prevent the squalor that accompanies overpopulation. I will always try promoting policies and ideas which fight its wrath. The US is where I live and it is not immune to the ravages of overpopulation that have already started to unravel the promises of democracy, and the ideals of hope cheered on by the crowds at the DNC. The policies for dealing with overpopulation are created within the ‘hallowed’ halls of the Whitehouse and Congress, but I also recognize the zeitgeist in which politics lives. No one who wants to win an election dare address it. Nixon had his knuckles rapped as he was told to shelve the Rockefeller commission on population, which found that allowing our population to grow beyond our means was a threat to America and its prosperity.

Good intentions to help people cannot keep up with what overpopulation does to the commons and our desire to improve the common good. Overpopulation is the ratio between a specie at the top of the food chain which requires over 80 gallons of fresh water a day, for starters, and what the earth can actually provide. Overpopulation turns well-intended politicians into the liars they rail against, for located in the underpinnings of their promises is the lie of limitless possibilities of America. Policies can make a huge difference in people’s lives. YES, it would be better to have the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes, and having health care benefits for all is a no-brainer, but the earth has policies too and they are written in stone, most likely in a language only few can read, so its lessons will be harsh and unrelenting.

The US lives under the policies of the Earth and those policies cannot be saved with more technology and certainly not with more people. Every techno-‘fix’ requires limited resources, energy to remove them and space to contain the waste they produce. Humans teeter at the top of the food and energy chain and nature teaches us that the top of that pyramid requires the least numbers not the most. As our climate continues to heat up, many parts of the world will become and are becoming unlivable. To add more people is not only ludicrous, it turns promises of helping people into eventual lies, because demand will continue to exceed the ability of services and resources to soothe our societal aches and pains.

Neither party will address the deeply unsustainable nature of our immigration policies, or how they actually undermine the promises just made at the DNC. What we will hear in the political banter will just be about securing our border. They don’t focus on how our total numbers must head in a downward direction, but instead will either scare us with criminal crossings or kids in cages. Discussion might get to be about jobs but never in a way that spells out the complexities of who is displaced or what kind of jobs remain in America and how salaries are reflected in the lowered expectations of new migrants. What we need are political advocates for a sustainable border and bills that do not add to the total numbers of Americans like some of the recent bills do. We must ask ourselves, how secure can a country be when we set the stage for the destruction of the commons by allowing our resources to be continue to be overrun by millions?

I will always choose kindness over harshness, and decency over anger. But I want that paired properly, like a fine wine with dinner, with the kind of sustainability that will allow those promises to be realized.

Earth Overshoot, A Meditation

According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, 18 million or more Americans meditate. I would

venture to say that this is millions more than understand the deep concept of ‘Earth Overshoot’. This is an abstract and admittedly inexact science of trying to demonstrate something few ever hear about on the news, in bars, or on social media.

The whole idea behind overshoot begins with the reality few ever ponder; that there are limits to the resources the earth can produce each year that humans need to survive. The biocapacity of the earth is its restricted ability to provide natural resource through its cycles.  Any grade schooler would be able to see that the fact that humanity is still growing after filling its continents with 8.1 billion consumers of water, food, shelter and energy is a trainwreck.

Humanity in total is using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet’s biocapacity can produce. That reality is the subtext for most of the problems in the world and needs a deeper understanding perhaps with the tools available to us through medication.

In the most developed nations, like the US, the consumption of those resources is so high that if everyone on the planet consumed like the average American, we would need 5.1 earths to meet that demand. Australia comes in second at 4.1 planets. The more developed the nation, the higher the individual ecological footprint.

Now billionaire entrepreneurs, namely Elon Musk, have their portfolios set on investing on colonizing Mars. Others talk about checking out other Goldilocks planets, the ones with similar conditions to the earth and ones with the possibility of having life on them. They see dollar signs and live in the delusion that we are living in the Star Trek universe. Those planets are far, far away. For example the planet we have named Proxima Centauri b is in what is known as in the habitable zone of its star, but is a whopping 4.2 light years OR 108,000 years away give or take the speed of the rocket ship. So until warp speed is invented or Uber Eats delivers in outer space, it would be wiser to stop destroying the Earth’s biosphere in a perpetual state of aggravated overshoot. To survive as a species dependent on a limited planet, our energies would be better placed on deeply examining the road we are on, one that cannot possibly sustain all of us with our current demand and numerical status let alone our future demand.

Americans are not going to willingly give up their big SUV’s microwaves, electric bikes, computers, big screen TV’s, refrigerator/freezers and air travel. Adding more Americans to this overconsumption disaster is ludicrous. When people come into America they are mostly coming from poorer countries, and they immediately start consuming more goods as soon as they get themselves established. On average they increase their ecological footprint by 4 X what it was in their home country. This raises the temperature on our ever-warming planet as our carbon footprint grows to accommodate this migration.

Sit in a room with the lights down low and quiet music playing. Perhaps light a few candles and burn some incense too. Now close your eyes and imagine our planet with all its mountains and deserts, its oceans and rivers, its prairies, and forests. Imagine that they all need to be left undisturbed and unpolluted in order to sustain us. In your mind’s eye visualize the oceans and how they evaporate to create clouds that then rain to fill our rivers and aquifers with water for us to use for everything from making our coffee to filling our swimming pools. Now imagine how slow the water cycle is and that it’s job of producing fresh water can so easily be used up. Just ask those in South Africa who must walk for miles to obtain enough for just one day. Some wells are hundreds of feet deep and cannot get filled up with a few rain events. Add to that a few news stories about climate change created drought and you have the fixings of overshoot. From there it is not hard to imagine that we are in even deeper doo-doo because the current condition of our resources is that of being battered with abusive extractions and growing demands.

While you are sitting cross legged on a comfortable pillow visualize how many people reside on the third planet from the sun. Start snapping your fingers once a second and mediate on the fact that to reach 8.1 billion seconds you would be sitting there snapping your fingers way passed your need for assisted living, it is over 248 years.

The US, the number one consumption country, currently has 366 million people in it, up from 203,392,031 when the 1970 census was taken in the year of the first Earth Day. That means that we have grown by 162 million in just 54 years. Close your eyes, hold your middle finger with your thumb and absorb the fact that every 1,000,000 seconds equals 11 days. Now snap your fingers once a second and don’t stop till you reach 162 million seconds. Your fingers might get a bit sore for that would take 1,875 days. The US has the power to control its population for the good news is that it is not coming from a high fertility rate, something very personal and challenging to mitigate. It is coming from out -of -control migration of people from other countries, and it matters not if people come through legal channels or steal across the border the unsustainable state of overshoot still runs its engine overtime.

Population growth doesn’t mean progress, and those high rises popping up everywhere doesn’t set us up for a good future. It sets us up for scarcity, poverty, misery suffering and early death. We can keep digging deeper wells and mine copper dust instead of nuggets. We can recycle our old batteries and metal for a while, but not for long and not without a tremendous cost in pollution and harm to miners.

We are deep into overshoot because the earth just can’t produce all of the resources we need. This year Earth Overshoot Day is on August 1, meaning that humanity's demand for resources exceeds the Earth's ability to regenerate them within a year. 

This day is calculated by dividing the number of resources the earth can regenerate by the number of resources it demands and multiplying by the number of days in the year. In other words, the world is now falling short of the demand by 5 months. This of course is an abstraction for we are in in constant overshoot for each and every day we add approximately 227,000 people to our global population.

In a deep mediative trance try to imagine what would happen if every US citizen and leader understood the suicide mission that is population growth and the consumption that stems from it. We would come up with immigration laws that were more sustainable from a resource perspective. We would be sure our policies would not add to our growth. We would say aloud we are full, overflowing and headed to a self-imposed diminished quality of life if we don’t do something soon. As our traffic jams and homelessness increase while our open land for wildlife is doing a deep dive it is time to consider the harsh reality that our country may be expansive, but it is not limitless.

Imagine how the world could look forward to a brighter future. If you could reach a deep awareness through meditation, this truth would emerge:  the cycles and forces of nature are in charge. We may be powerful players, but mother nature is not a reality we can transgress without suffering and earth overshoot day is here to remind us that we are playing with fire.