In this episode, we chat with Erica Gies, award-winning journalist and author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge. We explore the complex relationships between water, nature, and human societies, emphasizing the need to embrace 'slow water'—respecting the natural rhythms of water’s cycles for the benefit of both human and nonhuman life. Highlights include:

• Erica’s personal decision not to have biological children as both a personal choice and a contribution to reducing human pressure on the planet;
• The concept of 'slow water' and allowing for water’s natural cycles on the land contrasted with modern, infrastructure-heavy approaches that focus on controlling water;
• The broader implications of population growth on water and the need to address this issue within environmental and degrowth movements;
• The hidden complexity of natural systems in water ecology and the need to both appreciate our ignorance of these natural systems’ complexity while also working to understand them better in order to live more in harmony with the natural world;
• The significance of traditional knowledge and ecological wisdom in living more in harmony with natural water cycles.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/erica-gies

ABOUT US

The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests that draw the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Population Balance's mission to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet.

Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/

Copyright 2024 Population Balance

Hello, this is Nandita Bajaj, cohost of The Overpopulation Podcast and Executive Director of Population Balance. I am excited to share that we’ve launched a second podcast, Beyond Pronatalism: Finding Fulfillment, With or Without Kids. Please subscribe and share it widely. Episodes drop every two weeks and you can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss the chance to hear stories that could very well resonate with your own experiences—or open your mind to new ways of thinking about family, community, and personal fulfillment. And, if you’d like to be on the show, check out the show notes on how you can get in touch with me.

Show Notes and Transcript

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/beyond-pronatalism

Beyond Pronatalism | Finding fulfillment, with or without kids

To have or not have kids is one of the biggest decisions we make in our lives, and yet how many of us know that we even have a choice about how we define and create our families? Beyond Pronatalism host Nandita Bajaj interviews women and men from diverse backgrounds who are courageously and creatively navigating pronatalism - the powerful pressures to have children - whether from family, friends, or the culture at large. Through intimate conversations, they discuss how they are forging unconventional pathways to fulfillment, including redefining what family means to them - whether that means being childfree or childless, having biological children, adopting or fostering children or animals, or creating close-knit communities of friends and loved ones.

https://www.populationbalance.org/beyond-pronatalism-podcast

ABOUT US

Beyond Pronatalism is brought to you by Population Balance, the only non profit organization advancing ecological and reproductive justice by confronting pronatalism. This podcast is produced and hosted by Nandita Bajaj, with the support of the production team - Josh Wild, Elisabeth Strunk, Alan Ware and Kirsten Stade. Population Balance's mission to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet.

Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/

Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode, we chat with Dr. James Hopeward, an environmental civil engineering professor at the University of South Australia. We explore the limitations of conventional economic growth models and their environmental impacts, emphasizing the need for more holistic and ecologically grounded engineering practices and cultural beliefs.

Highlights include:

• Why decoupling economic growth from energy and material use relies on temporary efficiency gains and ultimately fails in a growth-based system, rendering the concepts of absolute and relative decoupling meaningless;
• How the IPCC treats economic and population growth as exogenous to its modelling scenarios, and has therefore both overestimated fossil fuel supplies and underestimated catastrophic social and ecological outcomes resulting from overshoot;
• Why understanding exponential growth was a crucial lesson for James and is now a key part of his engineering curriculum;
• Why future infrastructure projects must prioritize climate resiliency;
• Why the significance of population issues within environmental and degrowth movements must be urgently elevated to minimize further overshoot-related harm and suffering.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/james-hopeward

ABOUT US

The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests that draw the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Population Balance's mission to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet.

Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/

Copyright 2024 Population Balance