Population: The Elephant in the Room
Try to think of a crisis, problem, or challenge facing humanity that isn't due to or exacerbated by our exponentially increasing population. You can't. But you won't find discussions of population in most modern analyses of our current predicament or the future that we face. Most ecologists aren't afraid to talk about population, nor are people like Albert Barlett, Garrett Hardin (RIP), or Isaac Asimov (RIP).
Thomas Robert Malthus: An Essay on the Priniciple of Population, 1789: The first person to "get it," at least in public. Inaccurate in some details, and thus inappropriately rejected by growth proponents, this book's main thesis still holds: Humans make babies, and the food supply on a finite planet cannot keep up with the exponential growth of population. Not particularly easy reading, but then, not much from the late 18th century is.
Bill Moyers interview with Isaac
Asimov, 1989 (excerpt), in which Asimov clearly describes the decline in quality of life that accompanies anincrease in the quantity of humans.
The Tragedy of the
Commons, Garrett Hardin (1968): Much-anthologized work on commonized costs, privatized profits, and unharnessed population growth.
Extension of the Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin: Addresses a misconception about the original TotC.
Living on a Lifeboat, Garrett Hardin (1974): Another excellent, thought-provoking piece examining population and resource scarcity.
Garrett Hardin: Living Within Limits (1993): Book is subtitled Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. Wide-ranging treatise that nicely summarizes his ideas.
The New Flat
Earth Society, Albert Bartlett: Al shows that economist Julian Simon was, at least regarding population, an ignoramus.
Scientific American:
The Silent Lie , Albert Bartlett: Al trashes SA's 2006 special issue on Energy's Future Beyond Carbon for ignoring global population growth.
Are Humans Smarter Than Yeast? Effective 8-min YouTube "lecture" about exponential growth, overshoot and collapse, yeast, and humans.
Part 1 of Evolutionary psychology and peak oil:
A Malthusian-inspired "heads up" for humanity (Dr. Michael Mills) focuses on population and ecological overshoot. This single, huge page, crammed with graphics, requires a long load time and lots of scrolling; be patient.
Enough of us now (New Scientist, Sept 2009): Paul & Anne Ehrlich summarize the need for a global reduction in fertility, and reduced consumption in developed countries (esp. the U.S.).
Rare mainstream article about population as the chief problem facing humans (Jan 2009).
Sharon Astyk: Depletion and Abundance (2008): Chapter 6 expresses a much rosier outlook on population, but her optimism is predicated on idealistic hopes for changes in human behavior. She refers to Malthus, Bartlett, Hardin et al. (rather derisively) as "old men," yet her overly simplistic, literal view of their complex works strikes me as the product of a protective "young mom" in denial.
Population Growth Over Human History (from a course at the University of Michigan)
Historical Growth of the Human Population (from a course at Oregon State University)
World population, 1950–2050 (U.S. Census Bureau statistics)
World population prospects (interactive by country, region, or globe)
What Stops Population Growth? Hans Rosling's eye-candy graphics and glib delivery obscure his avoidance of the fact that Earth is a finite planet with finite resources.
Not to worry: Technology will save us (New Scientist, Sept 2009): Jesse Ausubel argues that technology will rescue us from population pressure. Conspicuously absent from his argument is any sense of finite resources on a finite planet.