Is political correctness being over-applied to avoid reporting on the connection between population growth/overpopulation and the numerous environmental crises they create and/or amplify? Sustainable population activist Mike Hanauer submitted this question to Grist, an online news magazine: “Why doesn’t Grist talk about population?”

According to Hanauer, news and discussion sites such as Nation of Change, The Hll, DailyKOS, GeekWire, and Commonwealth – like Grist, avoid the topic of population growth. His question got the most votes to be answered in Grist’s Ask Umbra column, so the subject was addressed in Humans Cause Climate Change. Do We Just Need Fewer Humans? The column was pretty disappointing, so we invited Mike onto the podcast to help host Dave Gardner dissect that response.

Mike is afraid it’s standard policy at progressive publications like Grist to avoid the overpopulation topic. Dave leaves room for the possibility that we just need to bring some of these journalists up to speed on the “humane, noble, joyful ways to educate and inspire people to voluntarily have smaller families, so that their children can have better lives.” So, in this episode, Gardner invites the author of that Grist column, Eve Andrews, to

1) listen to this podcast and

2) be our guest on a future episode of The Overpopulation Podcast – hopefully to update her position, but even to rebut Dave and Mike’s points in this episode if she still doesn't see things our way.

This episode was published May 7, 2019.