The Overpopulation Project
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Too many people consuming too much
The views and opinions expressed in guest blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Overpopulation Project.
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Announcing the new Human Overpopulation Atlas
The Overpopulation Project announces the Human Overpopulation Atlas, written by João L.R. Abegão. The Atlas is the extended masters thesis of the author in Ecology and Environment at the Department of Biology of the University of Porto in Portugal. This broad review work synthetizes knowledge about the past, present and future of human overpopulation. In…
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Population aging and smaller populations have many socioeconomic and environmental benefits
By The Overpopulation Project Team The Overpopulation Project announces its new publication that appeared on-line October 16 in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution (TREE): “Aging Human Populations: Good for Us, Good for the Earth” Frank Götmark, Philip Cafaro and Jane O’Sullivan from The Overpopulation Project explain that societies should embrace population aging and…
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Recognize family planning as a human right
By Richard Grossman Family planning was declared to be a basic human right fifty years ago. The right to family planning was included in the International Conference on Human Rights held in Tehran, May 1968. The concept of universal human rights started after World War II with the United Nations. Its charter included the obligation…
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Can the book “Factfulness” be improved?
Our blog about Factfulness led to comments, discussion and finally a response from one of its authors (note: the book is written in Hans Rosling’s voice and is the joint work of Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnblad; Hans Rosling died in February, 2017). Ola Rosling states that he welcomes our criticism and…
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Space for Nature
by Jenna Dodson How much of the planet should we leave for other forms of life? How much of the planet can the 7.6 billion present-day human inhabitants utilize without sacrificing the well-being of future generations? These are important questions with far reaching implications for all species, Homo sapiens included. People are placing unprecedented demands…
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Rethinking depopulation and land abandonment – the opportunity of rewilding
By Patrícia Dérer Thirty countries around the world have declining human populations. With the exception of Japan, these are European countries that, along with the rest of Europe, have successfully undergone the “demographic transition”. Impressive achievements in health care, education and economic development have resulted in lower child mortality and longer life expectancy, leading to…
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Immigration ethics for a world of limits
by Philip Cafaro Most political liberals and most academics across the developed world support expansive immigration policies, often up to and including free movement and settlement across national boundaries (“open borders”). They may agree to limit immigration for tactical reasons, because their benighted fellow citizens are not willing to be more generous. But they remain…
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”Factfulness”: a more accurate title for this new book would have been ”Selecting Facts to Make You Happy”
by Frank Götmark This year Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnblad (below the “Rosling team”) published “Factfulness” (Note: H.R. died in February 2017.) As the book to a large extent is about global population and as Bill Gates is giving free copies of it to college graduates in the US, we need to…
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Population growth is a threat to the world’s climate
Interview in Metro with Frank Götmark, 21.08.2018, translated from Swedish. See the original article here (pages 14-15)! The climate threat is now on everyone’s lips. However, it is rarely mentioned together with population growth, despite the fact that they interrelated. That is why actions to dampen population increase are missing, though they would lead to powerful…
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Evidence for the changing discourse on population growth in an environmental magazine
By Patrícia Dérer Many of us still remember how researchers, environmentalists and the media were concerned about population growth between the 1950s and the 1980s. Many of us could also notice, that this concern and attention declined during more recent decades, despite continued population growth. Nowadays there is almost a complete silence about overpopulation, both…
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