Austen has written a very readable book about a very difficult topic. He pulls no punches telling us how much numbers matter and yet manages to hold our feet to the fire without judgement. Environmental groups by and large have told us a lie by not telling us the full truth about overpopulation. Sweeping this issue under the rug of political correctness has only made matters worse. Austen rightly calls for open discussions about a world too full of us so that it may finally be addressed. I highly recommend his bold and seminal book.
Karen I Shragg
Anyone looking to read a concise but comprehensive account of reasons we should be concerned about population and what we do about it will find it here. In relatively few pages for such a huge subject, it ticks off the major issues and concerns and provides a good overview of the solutions. It risks overwhelming with facts at times and it would benefit from providing a more human story, enlivened with anecdotes or case studies. Austen writes clearly though, with the occasional memorable turn of phrase and he articulates a positive vision that lifts the book up from being just a text book, as it sometimes risks becoming. As a primer on population- a scandalously neglected and often misunderstood issue - this is excellent value
Futureproof
Despite its apocalyptic title, this book is an easy, informative, and ultimately uplifting read for anyone interested in the ecological future of our planet. Governments may be paralyzed, but people are increasingly aware and engaged in the population issue. A tipping point is at hand, Austen says, “where it is normal, accepted, and commonplace to talk about our numbers.”
Most Americans know there is a population problem. But for many of us, it’s a case “out of sight, out of mind.” Life has never been better. We spend a smaller share of income on food and clothing, more on self-indulgent baubles, and a lot more educating our children. Declining fertility rates, technological breakthroughs, and the unrealized predictions of Malthus and other scare mongers, create the impression that we can forestall environmental collapse indefinitely.
Like the boy who cried wolf, Austen is desperate to capture our attention. He has mine.
Save the Earth…Don’t Give Birth is self-published, and available on Amazon. A photo of Austen is on the back cover, but not a word on his education, occupation, or work experience. Such self-effacement is not surprising from a man who blames overpopulation, in part, on self-absorbed humans increasingly “…not looking outwards to help others and the world, instead sinking further into narcissism.”
Edwin Rubenstein
This is a rich collection of population facts and knowledge, a rather good ‘plain person’s guide to population’ but also much more. For those new to this increasingly interesting and important subject the 30 pages of Part 1 “How did We Get Here?”, give a fine broad sweep of the subject, enough to join discussions and, importantly, to realise the subject’s importance to us all.
For those working in the area it’s a useful repository of all those many population-related happenings that we had known, and some we did not, with dates, context, names and consequences or lack thereof.
The writing style is clear and bold, not at all out of place given the seriousness of our predicament: ‘Time taken for the first billion to arrive: 200,000 years, from one billion to seven billion, 200 years’ showing the dramatic increase in the speed with which Homo sapiens is increasing it’s spread around the planet. This is not a science treatise with references for all bold statements, nor should it be with its target the ordinary citizen, the Government official and environmental organisations. Interesting quotations by well-known people are offered at the start of each chapter.
EO Wilson’s ‘Half Earth’ tells much the same fundamental alarming story but is likely to be read largely by academics. This book takes the same important story to the rest of us. There is an impressive breadth of population-related issues – the author must have worked hard to identify so many facets of this intensely debated, and, as he shows, often berated subject.
In Part 1 of the six Parts, ‘How Did We Get Here?’, he draws attention to the many worthy initiatives, based on science, to bring the population issue to greater prominence only to conclude, too often, with : “The report has had the same impact as the others: it gathers dust.”
Part 2, ‘Populations’, provides essential numbers for populations, of the World and of some regions such as Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and some countries, selections based on particular population-related problems exhibited.
Part 3, ‘Apocalypse Soon?’ covers 20 subject areas particularly affected by population. Examples are climate breakdown (a preferred term over climate change), agriculture, migration, housing, pollution, war, the Sixth Extinction.
Part 4, ‘A Tricky Subject’, has 34 short sections each on an organisation or a phenomenon that blocks public understanding of the population issue. It’s puzzling why such denial is so widespread despite the potentially disastrous consequences, but Austen points out there many historical examples of such ‘spirals of silence’ such as with slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, where it has taken time to throw off previously accepted norms as unacceptable. The difference is that with population the damage is already being felt increasingly across all species with which we share the planet, with a significant portion of our own population, and with many crucial characteristics of the environment, and will therefore impact all members of our following generations. If you care for your grandchildren, this book is for you.
Part 5, Words of Wisdom, comprises mainly part of the Royal Society of Arts President’s Lecture given by Sir David Attenborough at their meeting of 2011. It’s a powerful address captured well in Austen’s excerpts. Sir David reminds us of the founding, 50 years previously, of what has become the largest environmental organisation in the World, now called the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). He points out that when it was founded the World population was 3 billion, but is now 7 billion, each one needing space for homes, space to grow food and build schools, road and airfields, most of it coming from land that, for millions of years, animals and plants had to themselves. He deplores the extraordinary silence that has accompanied this huge expansion of a single species to the detriment not just of other species and the environment but now rebounding on ourselves in the form of a billion living in permanent hunger, of climate change in which prestigious international meetings never mention the principal driver, the climate changers, us, and environmental NGOs whose admirable goals are simply unachievable without regard to the number of people in the World.
Some of Sir David’s salient points have become familiar at least to those active in population issues. He quotes the oxymoron “sustainable growth”, refuted by Kenneth Boulding, President Kennedy’s environmental advisor, ‘Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet is either mad – or an economist’. He points out that on a finite planet human growth will stop, and in one of two ways. The first is by fewer births i.e. through contraception, humanely, the second by increased deaths, through famine, disease or war.
In the final Part 6, ‘The Bounty of the Commons’, Austen looks forward to choices, prospects and consequences. He’s clearly confident that the knowledge exists to bring humanity into line with nature such that both can co-exist in a much, much better world for all. This requires a world human population returning to its size half a century earlier, around two to three billion, which is attainable humanely. One problem is that such knowledge resides mostly in the minds of scientists and environmental specialists and their several reports, and these are largely ignored by the media and Governments and, extraordinarily, by environmental NGOs, such that the public are woefully uninformed. It requires a much broader awareness of our predicament, across all of society, of the great public and often personal good of a small family, or of being childless, universal provision, at affordable or no cost, of contraception, universal educational opportunities, for girls as well as boys, both general and in reproductive health, and empowerment of women to choose their family size. Such broader public awareness requires the major environmental NGOs and others to abandon their damaging reticence to discuss population. Austen points out that this is beginning to happen but needs to do so much faster if we are to leave a comfortable world to our following generations.
Richard Vernon
Karen I Shragg
Anyone looking to read a concise but comprehensive account of reasons we should be concerned about population and what we do about it will find it here. In relatively few pages for such a huge subject, it ticks off the major issues and concerns and provides a good overview of the solutions. It risks overwhelming with facts at times and it would benefit from providing a more human story, enlivened with anecdotes or case studies. Austen writes clearly though, with the occasional memorable turn of phrase and he articulates a positive vision that lifts the book up from being just a text book, as it sometimes risks becoming. As a primer on population- a scandalously neglected and often misunderstood issue - this is excellent value
Futureproof
Despite its apocalyptic title, this book is an easy, informative, and ultimately uplifting read for anyone interested in the ecological future of our planet. Governments may be paralyzed, but people are increasingly aware and engaged in the population issue. A tipping point is at hand, Austen says, “where it is normal, accepted, and commonplace to talk about our numbers.”
Most Americans know there is a population problem. But for many of us, it’s a case “out of sight, out of mind.” Life has never been better. We spend a smaller share of income on food and clothing, more on self-indulgent baubles, and a lot more educating our children. Declining fertility rates, technological breakthroughs, and the unrealized predictions of Malthus and other scare mongers, create the impression that we can forestall environmental collapse indefinitely.
Like the boy who cried wolf, Austen is desperate to capture our attention. He has mine.
Save the Earth…Don’t Give Birth is self-published, and available on Amazon. A photo of Austen is on the back cover, but not a word on his education, occupation, or work experience. Such self-effacement is not surprising from a man who blames overpopulation, in part, on self-absorbed humans increasingly “…not looking outwards to help others and the world, instead sinking further into narcissism.”
Edwin Rubenstein
This is a rich collection of population facts and knowledge, a rather good ‘plain person’s guide to population’ but also much more. For those new to this increasingly interesting and important subject the 30 pages of Part 1 “How did We Get Here?”, give a fine broad sweep of the subject, enough to join discussions and, importantly, to realise the subject’s importance to us all.
For those working in the area it’s a useful repository of all those many population-related happenings that we had known, and some we did not, with dates, context, names and consequences or lack thereof.
The writing style is clear and bold, not at all out of place given the seriousness of our predicament: ‘Time taken for the first billion to arrive: 200,000 years, from one billion to seven billion, 200 years’ showing the dramatic increase in the speed with which Homo sapiens is increasing it’s spread around the planet. This is not a science treatise with references for all bold statements, nor should it be with its target the ordinary citizen, the Government official and environmental organisations. Interesting quotations by well-known people are offered at the start of each chapter.
EO Wilson’s ‘Half Earth’ tells much the same fundamental alarming story but is likely to be read largely by academics. This book takes the same important story to the rest of us. There is an impressive breadth of population-related issues – the author must have worked hard to identify so many facets of this intensely debated, and, as he shows, often berated subject.
In Part 1 of the six Parts, ‘How Did We Get Here?’, he draws attention to the many worthy initiatives, based on science, to bring the population issue to greater prominence only to conclude, too often, with : “The report has had the same impact as the others: it gathers dust.”
Part 2, ‘Populations’, provides essential numbers for populations, of the World and of some regions such as Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and some countries, selections based on particular population-related problems exhibited.
Part 3, ‘Apocalypse Soon?’ covers 20 subject areas particularly affected by population. Examples are climate breakdown (a preferred term over climate change), agriculture, migration, housing, pollution, war, the Sixth Extinction.
Part 4, ‘A Tricky Subject’, has 34 short sections each on an organisation or a phenomenon that blocks public understanding of the population issue. It’s puzzling why such denial is so widespread despite the potentially disastrous consequences, but Austen points out there many historical examples of such ‘spirals of silence’ such as with slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, where it has taken time to throw off previously accepted norms as unacceptable. The difference is that with population the damage is already being felt increasingly across all species with which we share the planet, with a significant portion of our own population, and with many crucial characteristics of the environment, and will therefore impact all members of our following generations. If you care for your grandchildren, this book is for you.
Part 5, Words of Wisdom, comprises mainly part of the Royal Society of Arts President’s Lecture given by Sir David Attenborough at their meeting of 2011. It’s a powerful address captured well in Austen’s excerpts. Sir David reminds us of the founding, 50 years previously, of what has become the largest environmental organisation in the World, now called the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). He points out that when it was founded the World population was 3 billion, but is now 7 billion, each one needing space for homes, space to grow food and build schools, road and airfields, most of it coming from land that, for millions of years, animals and plants had to themselves. He deplores the extraordinary silence that has accompanied this huge expansion of a single species to the detriment not just of other species and the environment but now rebounding on ourselves in the form of a billion living in permanent hunger, of climate change in which prestigious international meetings never mention the principal driver, the climate changers, us, and environmental NGOs whose admirable goals are simply unachievable without regard to the number of people in the World.
Some of Sir David’s salient points have become familiar at least to those active in population issues. He quotes the oxymoron “sustainable growth”, refuted by Kenneth Boulding, President Kennedy’s environmental advisor, ‘Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet is either mad – or an economist’. He points out that on a finite planet human growth will stop, and in one of two ways. The first is by fewer births i.e. through contraception, humanely, the second by increased deaths, through famine, disease or war.
In the final Part 6, ‘The Bounty of the Commons’, Austen looks forward to choices, prospects and consequences. He’s clearly confident that the knowledge exists to bring humanity into line with nature such that both can co-exist in a much, much better world for all. This requires a world human population returning to its size half a century earlier, around two to three billion, which is attainable humanely. One problem is that such knowledge resides mostly in the minds of scientists and environmental specialists and their several reports, and these are largely ignored by the media and Governments and, extraordinarily, by environmental NGOs, such that the public are woefully uninformed. It requires a much broader awareness of our predicament, across all of society, of the great public and often personal good of a small family, or of being childless, universal provision, at affordable or no cost, of contraception, universal educational opportunities, for girls as well as boys, both general and in reproductive health, and empowerment of women to choose their family size. Such broader public awareness requires the major environmental NGOs and others to abandon their damaging reticence to discuss population. Austen points out that this is beginning to happen but needs to do so much faster if we are to leave a comfortable world to our following generations.
Richard Vernon