It’s time to admit human overpopulation contributes to our most serious crises, and to thank the young people who are demonstrating the solution.

One Planet, One Child billboard near downtown Minneapolis

We’re putting up billboards across the U.S. celebrating the choice to have a small family — a family with one or even zero children. Why are we applauding that choice?

Two years ago the U.S. birth rate hit a new low not seen in over 30 years. Millennials were delaying “starting a family,” choosing to have smaller families, and in many cases skipping the whole “raising a family” thing. I was facing that decision 30 years ago, newly married, not confident I could afford children, and well aware of human overpopulation concerns. I chose to have a vasectomy after my second child. Since then, the overpopulation concerns that informed my decision have faded from public consciousness — because open discussion of overpopulation became actively avoided.

Soon after 2018’s record-low birth rate was announced, a wave of warnings came from economists, concerned about the shrinking labor force of the future. Fewer workers could well result in a “stagnant economy.” In the name of GDP growth, economists implored millennials to get busy conceiving and raising the workers of tomorrow! That is ill-advised.

“The implication is that population can continue its unhindered growth — as if a world of 10 billion ‘carbon neutral’ people could be sustainable. It can’t.” - David Skrbina, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Michigan

Ignoring the perils of overpopulation in order to continue growing a national or global economy is like burning down the house to keep warm.

“What makes for a strong society is healthy people, prosperous people and happy people — not more people. Americans can put low birthrates at the bottom of their worry list.” - Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop

I find it offensive that number-crunchers want women to get busy incubating new slaves to serve a Ponzi economy addicted to growth. Economic growth strikes me as an inadequate, indefensible reason to bring a life into this world. We, and any children we might choose to bring into this world, are human beings, not a labor force, not economic pawns, not “consumers.”

You might, however, be surprised to learn that the number one reason I’m thankful for this move to smaller families is my love for children. I want the children who are brought into this world to have a bright future, one with clean air and water, a livable climate and their needs met. For that to happen, smaller families are essential.

It’s becoming more and more clear that we’ve passed the limit of the number of human beings our good Earth can sustainably support. We’ve been straining her for some time, and she’s showing unmistakable signs of serious fatigue. Report after report tells us we’re extinguishing other species at record rates, pumping rivers and aquifers dry, overloading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, collapsing fisheries, and the list goes on. We are in ecological overshoot. Earth cannot keep meeting our needs if we keep this up.

Our behavior and our growth-obsessed economic system play a major role in the destructive binge we’re on. We should go vegan, give up air travel, trade in our Mcmansions for tiny houses, boycott Black Friday and Cyber Monday, stop insisting that our retirement nest eggs grow — and end our society’s pursuit of everlasting GDP growth. Yes, really. We should.

But guess what? Even that won’t be enough to get back into sustainable balance with nature. We can perfect every conservation, prevention and mitigation practice and technology, get everything exactly right, and still Mother Earth will not be able to sustainably meet the needs of today’s nearly 8 billion “consumers.”

We need to correct our overconsumptive behavior, and we need to reduce our overwhelming numbers. There are many activists and NGOs, and even a few policymakers, encouraging us to cut back on profligate consumption and/or rein in the appetite of capitalism. But there are few making the crucial point that human numbers are a vital part of the equation.

“Population must go down — either voluntarily, slowly, and rationally, or else nature is likely to do the job for us. And she won’t be kind.” - David Skrbina, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Michigan

It’s sad that we avoid that conversation, because it’s actually the sustainability solution with the best chance of success. Why? Because we’ve already demonstrated we’re willing to do what’s necessary to contract our population. We’ve been freely choosing to have smaller and smaller families. In 1960 the average family had five children. Today the average is less than 2.5. That’s great progress.

Meanwhile, we’ve demonstrated very little will to shrink our lifestyles — to fly and drive less, buy durable instead of disposable, and shrink our houses, for example. Making these changes, while needed, is going to be more difficult. And lifestyle changes will have to be much more drastic — if we refuse to simultaneously address the overpopulation issue. If you do the math, just at today’s nearly 7.8 billion world population, we’d all have to live like paupers in order to achieve sustainable balance and stop crippling Earth’s life-supporting ecosystems.

“Most people aren’t even aware of the scale of personal austerity needed to conform to a ‘sustainable lifestyle,’ and what it means to have a finite planet with finite resources where the share of the pie keeps diminishing as the number of hands demanding a share grows.” - João L.R. Abegão, editor of Human Overpopulation Atlas”

Even with today’s smaller families, we’re still adding over 80 million people to the planet every year. We’re in such a state of overshoot today, that we need to pick up the pace and further decrease the average family, and do it more quickly. Informed family-size decisions are important for all of us to make — every nation, every ethnicity, every income and every education level.

In Saving the Planet One (Less) Child at a Time, New Zealand psychology lecturer Tracy Morison told an interviewer, “Family size has a direct impact on overall consumption rates…. Obviously, it’s more of a pressing issue in the developed world where children will have a bigger carbon footprint, simply because of the lives they lead and because they’re the biggest consumers on the planet, but if populations everywhere keep growing, there simply won’t be enough usable, arable land to feed everyone. So we all need to think about family planning…. there’s so little we can personally do to reverse environmental damage, but by choosing not to have children, I’ve done something that will have a significant impact on my personal carbon footprint.”

In the same piece, college student Krystal Hartley told the reporter:, “We need a paradigm shift so that it’s acceptable not to have children. Those of us choosing to do so to save the planet should be celebrated, not vilified.”

Actress Cameron Diaz noted the start of a shift in 2009 when she said, “I think women are afraid to say that they don’t want children because they’re going to get shunned. But I think that’s changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don’t have kids than those that do. And, honestly? We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.”

It’s pretty clear what needs to be done, but we’re spinning our wheels because it remains too uncomfortable to discuss.

“Giving women options can go a long way toward reducing our global population and leaving more resources for each person. But we also need to be honest and open about the topic of overpopulation and what to do about it.” - Journalist Erica Gies

“If not having another child saves more than 20 times more carbon per year, why aren’t more journalists talking about human population in proportion to the climate impact that it can have?” - Wudan Yan, in Columbia Journalism Review

That’s why World Population Balance launched the One Planet, One Child Billboard Campaign. It’s time we had this conversation. We want to celebrate and thank today’s young people who are choosing to have fewer children. They’re trendsetters setting a good example. We want to make it okay, respectable, even admirable, to choose a smaller family. That’s the most loving thing prospective parents can do for all the children of the world.

Post-doctoral research fellow Trevor Hedberg at The Ohio State University postulated that advertising and media campaigns could be used to counteract a “pro-natalist” environment, “whereby it’s just assumed people will have children at a certain age and that being childless isn’t a socially acceptable outcome.”

Aside from leaving a healthy planet that gives the next generation a chance to live decent lives, the small-family choice has many other benefits. Smaller families have more financial resources — to invest in education and meet the many other needs of a child, and to be more secure and resilient in the face of hardships like the economic recession brought on by the coronavirus emergency. Parents are also able to give a single child more attention and more quality time.

“Smaller families are more prosperous families. They are able to form communities that invest more resources, time, and love into their children’s education. It impacts economic inequality and childhood development in profound and meaningful ways. It is also a pathway to significant reductions in greenhouse gases and global warming. Without question, a planned family is the pathway to a better future for everyone.” - Project Drawdown founder Paul Hawken

There is just no downside to choosing smaller families, while the upside is big: it’s the only path to decent lives and a beautiful future for generations to come.

“Our defining gift as humans is our power to choose, including our power to choose our collective future. It is a gift that comes with a corresponding moral responsibility to use that power in ways that work to the benefit of all people and the whole of life.” - Former Harvard Business School professor David Korten

One Planet, One Child billboard outside Denver, Colorado

Our billboards are up right now in Minneapolis and Denver. The timing is unfortunate, because few commuters are on the roads, and media attention is appropriately focused on the coronavirus emergency. But hopefully we’ll attract more support and be able to extend and expand the campaign when the time is right. Let’s get this conversation going. Especially for those of us in the overdeveloped world — where each of us consumes way above our share of Earth’s resources and has an oversized carbon footprint — we have a moral responsibility to the rest of the world to help shape a beautiful future by embracing one and no-child families.

“Do we want a world of more people with less opportunity for good health, peace and prosperity, or fewer people with more of each?” - Sara Perine, of Earth Overshoot

Learn more about the One Planet, One Child Billboard Campaign.

Dave Gardner is executive director of World Population Balance, the producer of the film, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, and co-host of The Overpopulation Podcast and the GrowthBusters podcast about sustainable living.