Population Balance

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Population Balance

Vision: A future where our human footprint is in balance with the rest of the planet.

We educate about—and offer solutions to address—the impacts of human overpopulation and overconsumption on the planet, people, and animals.

08/18/2026

Our latest commentary, co-authored by a group of leading scholars from diverse disciplines, including environmental and climate science, law, reproductive health and rights, anthropology, and economics, was just published in the Journal of Population and Sustainability.

Reactionary pronatalist policies are on the rise worldwide — not only undermining reproductive rights, but also largely ignoring planetary boundaries: the limits to what Earth can sustain.

Here is what pronatalism is getting wrong ❌:

1. Environment 🌳: Population growth already has, and continues to have, an unprecedented impact on the environment, as a key driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and ecological debt.
2. Human Rights 🏛️: Investing in reproductive rights and voluntary family planning supports both human wellbeing and environmental sustainability, since women with reproductive autonomy tend to opt for smaller families.
3. Global Population 📈: Our global population continues to grow and is projected to reach 10.3 billion by the mid-2080s despite declining fertility rates.

08/13/2026

Raised within pronatalist rural Midwestern US, Sarah experienced an accidental pregnancy while serving in the Peace Corps and chose to have an abortion. Feeling ashamed and lonely, she turned to the healing power of nature by hiking the Appalachian Trail and found the courage to write a book and speak publicly about her abortion experience. A decade later, Sarah remains grateful for her abortion and lives a childfree, materially simple life in kinship with the more-than-human world.

Check out Sarah’s conversation on the Beyond Pronatalism podcast with host Nandita Bajaj.

08/12/2026

Poet and author Molly Peacock chats about the many life challenges and opportunities, starting at age 4, that made her decide, over and over again, that she would not have children. Listen to our full panel that was recorded in honor of

08/07/2026

Geologist and author Marcia Bjornerud discusses — with hosts Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware of the OVERSHOOT podcast — how thinking like a geologist can cultivate the grounded humility of a deep time perspective. We explore Earth's turbulent history, humanity's emergence as a geologic force, and why humanity and all of life - past, present, and future - is utterly dependent on the rocky planet beneath our feet.

Listen on your favorite podcast platform.

08/04/2026

The worldview of is driving the human expansionism that is devastating the living world. In our republished 2022 interview of the , hosts Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware chat with philosopher and environmental writer, Eileen Crist. Author of Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization, Eileen offers a compelling alternative - reimagining ourselves as "Earthlings" and creating societies that make space for the flourishing of all life.

Highlights include:

🔸Why the biodiversity crisis is fundamentally a crisis of ongoing and relentless human expansion and results in continued depopulation of the nonhuman world;

🔸How the worldview of human supremacy - the belief that humans are superior to nonhumans and all of nature - is the pervasive and unrecognized force driving human expansionism;

🔸How human expansionism began with the first expanding empires, much earlier than modern capitalism;

🔸Why creating an ecological civilization requires 'scaling down' human activity and 'pulling back' from nature to make space for nonhuman life;

🔸Why plant-based eating is one of the most effective ways of increasing biodiversity;

🔸Why language is critical, and how words like "w**d" and "natural resources" distort our relationship to nature;

🔸How we need to regain our indigenous-inspired identity as responsible, interconnected Earthlings;

🔸Why an ecological civilization will be local in terms of living and also globally connected, replacing domination with coexistence in an age of deepening ecological overshoot.

Listen on your favorite podcast platform. Link in the comments 👇🏼

08/01/2026

Happy International Childfree Day!

Today is also the two-year anniversary of our Beyond Pronatalism podcast, for which we have interviewed 50 guests (with and without children) about how they are navigating and redefining kinship and fulfillment.

Here are a few of our guests sharing what their life has enabled them to become and do.

Have your own story you’d like to share? Join us on the Beyond Pronatalism podcast (bit.ly/3S3sVr3) or share your experiences in the comments below!

07/31/2026

Choosing not to have children is becoming more common, but childfree adults, especially women still face assumptions that they’re selfish, dislike children, will regret their decision, or owe their partners and families children.

For International this Saturday, we’re challenging those stereotypes and asking a much simpler question: Why is it still so difficult to accept that parenthood is a choice?

Through the experiences of our own Marian Starkey and Population Balance Executive Director Nandita Bajaj, we explore childfreedom, pronatalist pressure, the myth of “population collapse,” and why there is no single path to a meaningful life.

And yes, we also address the YouTube commenter who asked why Marian’s husband didn’t leave her because she didn’t want children. 👀
👇
https://populationconnection.org/blog/childfree-adults-challenging-stereotypes/

07/30/2026

Based on new analysis by our colleagues at Global Footprint Network , for 2026 is today, July 30th this year. This means that since the beginning of the year until today, humanity has demanded as much from nature as Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate during the entire year. This is the equivalent of living off 1.73 Earths, the highest overshoot ever recorded.

is driven by a combination of overpopulation, overproduction, and overconsumption. To address overshoot, we must address all aspects of growth of the human enterprise that are threatening our collective future.

Overshoot will end - by design or disaster.

Let’s end by design - by addressing the outsized impact of our species on the rest of the living planet.

Let’s .

07/29/2026

Our team at Population Balance is deeply saddened by the sudden passing of our dear colleague Richard Heinberg of Post Carbon Institute on July 19, 2026. Through his decades of writing, teaching, and organizing Richard helped countless people, including us, better understand the realities of a finite planet, and how we might live well within its limits. This slideshow, based on our podcast interview with him in May 2023, captures the less-known aspects of Richard's advocacy around downscaling the human enterprise, namely, a rights-based reduction in human population and consumption. We extend our deepest condolences to Richard's wife Janet Barocco as well as our friends at Post Carbon Institute.

07/26/2026

Are people really having fewer kids than they desire? Do falling birth rates spell disaster? In our latest article published by our friends at World Vasectomy Day, our executive director Nandita Bajaj exposes the misinformation (including among progressives) that is driving low-fertility alarmism. Link to the full article in bio.

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