The Big Chew Podcast

Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the modern plague" and challenged us to heal it, especially since we knew how.

That "plague" is overpopulation—but in Dr. King's time, U.S. population was driven by a high birth rate.

Today, the major driver of U.S. population growth is mass immigration—up to 1.5 million people come to live in the U.S. every year, and have for years, through legal and illegal means.

What does that have to do with the environment? Well, the last thing this planet needs is more overconsuming Americans, says environmental ethicist, author, progressive activist, and philosophy professor Dr. Philip Cafaro. Mass immigration is also the last thing needed by the poor people already living in America: it forces lower wages and more competition for low-skilled jobs. Yes, immigrants themselves can often build better lives here. And hey! Wealthy Americans and corporations get cheap labor and new markets.

Phil Cafaro's excellent book, How Many Is Too Many?: The Progressive Argument for Reducing Immigration Into the United States, lays out sane, humane arguments you've probably never heard before. Too often, US immigration is talked about in a binary, polarizing way: you're a liberal for open borders, or you're a conservative who wants a wall. It takes on racial tones—you're either for poor people from other countries building a better life in the U.S., or you fear a changing demographic and retreat into nationalism. But what if…

-You care about the serious environmental impacts?

-You realize the connection between a "perpetual growth economy," which screws the planet, and the drive for more immigrants to work more cheaply and buy more stuff?

-You understand how mass immigration drives economic inequality in the US?

-You want to help the world's poor in a way that helps them build better lives in their own countries, cultures, and communities?

-You realize the world has changed since Emma Lazarus wrote that poem?

-You yourself are the descendent of immigrants and don't want to be selfish?

And what if you wonder why the hell environmentalists don't talk about the impacts of immigration anymore, when it used to be a major issue?

This conversation, and Phil's book, outline not only the problems, but suggestions for building better immigration policies: Open to refugees, home to Dreamers, but at a scale our biosystems can handle. Any "developed" country could benefit from his work.

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Babies come from stories. From beliefs. Some of those stories are beautiful: I want to love and care for someone; I have a lot to share with a growing human.

But a whole lot of baby-making beliefs aren't true for everyone, and many aren't true, period. Here are a few of the harmful and expired: I won't feel fulfilled without a child; It's nobody's business if I want to make a lot of kids; I'm not a real woman/man if I don't become a mother/father; People who don't have kids are selfish.

With a population at 7.6 billion, and with a planet in serious overshoot, we need to look at these beliefs.

Author Laura Carroll has done just that. She's researched where these beliefs come from and talked with thousands of people about their lives with and without kids. She's looked at the devastating impacts—on individual families, cultures, and on the wider world— of assuming everyone should reproduce. She's spoken on these issues on major radio and television outlets and is has authored several books about the outmoded pressures to have children and about the option of living child-free. (See links below).

In this conversation, Laura and I talk primarily about the ideas from her book, The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Minds From Outmoded Thinking About Parenthood and Reproduction Will Create a Better World. Laura also edited the second edition of deep ecologist Dave Forman's Man Swarm: How Overpopulation is Killing the Wild World. I recommend both of them.

This conversation isn't anti-kid. Laura and I are typical of people who have warm relationships with kids who aren't our own. But whether someone really desires parenthood or not, we need to bring the breeding thing down some major notches if anyone's kids are going to have a chance. Laura and I talk about:

-What "pronatalism" is; examples of how we're soaking in it

-Studies that show how having fewer children is essential for stopping extreme climate change*

-How religions and businesses promote childbearing and why

-The 7 assumptions that promote childbearing, why they're not true, and the healthier ones that could replace them

We also mention Bill McKibben's Maybe One: The Case for Smaller Families

NOTE: I swear in this. It's hard not to when you're talking about powerful stories that aren't true. Hey— I'm even worse in person. And I don't care anymore. And Laura's much nicer than I am.

Laura Carrol's other books are Families of Two: Interviews With Happily Married Couples Without Children by Choice (international update on the way!), and Finding Fulfillment From the Inside Out.

* Please note that the US is different from many Western countries in that it has the largest carbon footprint and is growing rapidly. You can learn more in the previous Big Chew episode with Joe Bish from the Population Media Center, or in the following episode with philosophy professor and environmental ethicist Philip Cafaro. Among other things, in the prior Chew Joe Bish and I talk about countries whose population is declining and who consider that a positive thing.

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There are too many humans on Earth, it's screwing everything up, and we have to change. There. I said it. Environmentalists used to say this frequently and passionately, and then they stopped:talking about population took on racial overtones ("too many of those brown people!"), or fears of "control" and force, as became the case in China.

Meanwhile, there are even more people on Earth, and many more expected, and it's screwing everything up. But don't take my word for it:

The only choice...limited number, happy life...meaningful life. Too many...miserable life and always bullying one another, exploiting one another.

That's what His Holiness the Dalai Lama says. Would he lie to you?

Now here's the good news—we know what works, and it's good for everyone, especially women. But we can't wait. My guest, Joe Bish, is Director of Issue Advocacy for the Population Media Center based here in Vermont. The PMC works through the power of story. Throughout the world, they present locally sourced soap operas—yes, soap operas!— that help people make better decisions about their lives, their health, and how many kids they have. PMC's results are well-studied and powerful.

Joe knows population. In this conversation, we talk about how population drives everything from climate change to political instability to extinction, who benefits from population growth (hint: neoliberal economists and pro-growth die hards), how and why PMC's methods work, and why we all need to return the population overshoot problem to center stage.

"People" was composed by Jule Styne with original lyrics by Bob Merrill, and is used here via Fair Use of the Copyright Law Section 107.

Wendy Marsman was raised in a strict Evangelical community in rural Canada. She fulfilled her dream of being a missionary by moving to the Brazilian Amazon for eight years with her then-husband and children. What followed was an unraveling of what she believed, and a painful realization that, as a woman, she was a second-class citizen in Christianity.

Wendy has faced some stark personal truths, and has surmounted major changes to found Women Beyond Belief, a podcast where other women (and men) finding their way out of religious beliefs can also find community.

We talk about:

How she feels about having promoted to indigenous people beliefs she no longer holds herself

How her community used religion to hide abuse

How women were treated in her Evangelical faith

"Closeted" atheists and dark family secrets: life in the "mission field" of the Amazon

The different paths she's seen people take out of Christian belief—and which one she took

The loss that can come with leaving one's religious culture

Where she derives her "morality" and "ethics" outside of religion--and how she feels more deeply moral than before

Where she turned when faced with a serious disease

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Water: It's not just a "resource." It's not a "thing" that happens. Our bodies are mostly water. Maybe our souls are, too.

Becca Lawton would know. She's a veteran river guide on the great rivers of the American West who became a fluvial geologist. She's also a beautiful writer whose prize-winning books and essays have helped her understand the connections between humans and wild water.

If you live in the Western Hemisphere, you've heard a lot about water lately—mostly in the form of epic floods. No matter where you live, there's some kind of water issue going on (droughts, epic forest fires, you name it). We need to talk about it.

Becca and I chat about:

How, year after year, she saw people reclaim themselves on a river trip (give yourself at least three days)

What river guiding taught her about humans

Rivers as spiritual source

How writing and stories can help us grok our place in Nature

Her Fulbright research on why human brains don't recognize the risks of climate change

Her wish in human-water relations

Your new vocabulary word, "thalweg"

Here's Becca's website, with info on her wonderful books.

https://beccalawton.com/books-2/

Maybe life feels so nuts—environmentally, politically, economically, culturally—you're hitting the streets. Or hitting your head against the wall. WTF? What to do?

First, calm down and listen to this episode.

My guest, Stephanie Kaza, has been there. She cut her teeth as a

biologist back when U.S rivers were on fire. She's spent decades in Zen Buddhist practice. She's professor emerita of environmental studies at the University of Vermont, where she guided their campus sustainability program. She's got perspective, tools, and an activist heart that seeks to connect the dots and connect people. She's written terrific books, including Mindfully Green. We chat about:

The difference between choosing a green "lifestyle" and "lifeway"

Epiphanies that can open our path

Questions to ask if you want to get involved

Acknowledging grief and other feelings emerging from our challenges

The links between dualism and domination

How practicing restraint builds our ethical strength

The warrior mentality and the peacekeeper—and how to choose

Music in this episode is "The Kami of Fujiyama" by TALES from Pictures from Asia, used via a Creative Commons license.

Progress! Economic growth! Affluence! Forget about it—at least while basic laws of science are in effect. I talk with Tom Wessels, ecologist, professor, and one of New England's clearest environmental voices. We focus on Tom's gem of a book, The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future. In it he explains how any economy focusing on economic growth (which differs from economic development) conflicts with basic scientific laws. And that never ends well.

Here's the deal: Life on Earth isn't linear. It's much more interesting, dynamic, and creative. Most aspects of our lives—the biotic world we live in, our weather, bodies, communities, economies, our political structures—are complex systems. They can't be understood through the linear, reductionist thinking that has held sway for several hundred years. Damn you, Descartes!

Tom Wessels has a knack for explaining simply and clearly where our daily lives meet scientific laws. Once we can see systems, relationships, and emergence as how the planet rolls, we might be able to build living economies that thrive within living ecosystems.

We talk about how, on a finite planet, "economic growth" is a dangerous fantasy (particularly addictive to politicians), how to improve our relations with natural systems, and:

How complex systems work—and how they can thrive

How linear systems work

Where these ideas have been the past several hundred years

How positive feedback loops can bite us in not-so-positive places

How corporate mergers and free trade defy the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—BAD!

How a return to "ancient values" can bring us back to what matters

...And we're greeted by the sight of a doe and her tiny fawn enjoying a romp in the field outside the window.

Tom Wessels is a terrestrial ecologist and professor emeritus at Antioch University New England where he founded the master's degree program in Conservation Biology. Tom has conducted ecology and sustainability workshops through out the United States for over three decades and is the author of six books, including Reading the Forested Landscape, The Myth of Progress, with his latest being Granite, Fire, and Fog: The Natural and Cultural History of Acadia.

Want more on complexity and systems thinking? The late, great Donella Meadows wrote Thinking in Systems.

And while we're talking books, my comrades at the Dark Mountain Project in the UK have just published Walking On Lava, Selected Works for Uncivilised Times. I'm really honored to have my work included. Essays, stories, and art from Dark Mountain's first ten years take a slant look at our critical age. Included is the original Dark Mountain Manifesto, which says it all...

Biologist Lynn Margulis gave us a new way to look at life—and perhaps, a new way to live it. She showed life doesn't evolve just through random DNA mistakes and competition. Instead, interdependence is the key. Cells are the baseline—not "selfish" genes. Loops and new relationships replace linear branches of life. Nothing is an individual: everything is a community. Every living thing is conscious of its surroundings.

Evolution geographer James MacAllister was Lynn Margulis's graduate student, friend, swimming buddy, and assistant for 10 years, until her sudden death in 2011. He created animations of many of her discoveries, was her teaching assistant, and continues to digitize and represent her research.

I met Jim at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts, where we talked about:

-Old-school evolution thinking based on random DNA mistakes and competition (aka the Modern Synthesis or neo-Darwinism. Richard Dawkins, a neo-Darwinist, who often sparred with Lynn Margulis, once called her "Attila the Hen.")

-Lynn's radically different work on how life evolves (aka symbiosis, biological relativity, systems biology)

-How the Modern Synthesis doesn't do justice to the microbiome

-How DNA is like a bundt pan

-How Lynn and James Lovelock collaborated on Gaia Theory

-How this view of evolution could change our outlook on how to live

Keep an eye out for this new film, Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis Rocked the Boat and Started a Scientific Revolution. You can watch the trailer at http://hummingbirdfilms.com/symbioticearth/

Jim MacAllister's Environmental Evolution newsletter http://www.envevo.org/environmentalevolution.org/Home.html

Music in this episode is "Always Be" by the Colin L. Orchestra, from Live at WNYU, used via a Creative Commons license.

Donna Mulvenna left a busy professional life in Australia to live in the Amazon rainforest of French Guiana. She thought it would be a temporary adventure with her partner, an Olympic canoe racer. After many local frustrations, a serious illness, and some profound spiritual experiences in the forest, she's a changed person in how she views Nature, humans, and what's really necessary for a beautiful life.

Donna and I spoke while she and her partner, Franck, were visiting relatives in his native France. She's now back in the Amazon. We talked about:

How she now views her anxiety and discontent with urban life in Australia

Her stages of adjustment to a wilder, way-more-than-human world

How native jungle medicine quickly brought her back from a serious disease

Her "awakening" experience while on a river expedition

The many ethnic groups of French Guiana and how they get along

Challenges with companies and countries exploiting the Amazon

The animals she hangs out with in her tree house office where she wrote Wild Roots

Donna's books are available at www.DonnaMulvenna.com

Music in this episode is "Home, Home at Last" by Blue Dot Sessions, from the album, Warmbody.

By the way, if you like this podcast, won't you leave a review on iTunes? Just search for "the Big Chew Podcast" on iTunes and look for "reviews." Thanks!

Natural Farming" is as much a life philosophy as a way of farming. Larry Korn has dedicated his life to teaching Natural Farming, which he learned from his mentor, the late, great Masanobu Fukuoka, author of One-Straw Revolution. This "no-method method"arose from a spiritual revelation Fukuoka had about healing the rift between humans and the natural world. Larry likens Natural Farming to indigenous agriculture, emphasizing relationship and humility instead of intellect and control. The reward is abundant food and an authentic life.

Larry Korn helped translate One-Straw Revolution and Fukuoka's other books into English. He also traveled with Fukuoka-san in the US, and Larry's own book, One-Straw Revolutionary, shares what he learned living and working on Fukuoka's farm in Japan.

We talk about:

-Why Fukuoka, who trained as a plant scientist, railed against science

-What Fukuoka learned in a spiritual revelation about Nature

-Why Natural Farming looks counterintuitive; the indigenous idea

-How this path differs from permaculture, which Larry also studied with its co-founder Bill Mollison

-How Larry has brought this philosophy into his daily life

-How Fukuoka's work dispels the idea that only hunter-gatherers, not farmers, could live in harmony with Nature

-Why Fukuoka's high yields with "no-work" methods challenge the need for technology

We ended our rich conversation once the neighbor cranked up the lawn mower—you'll just hear a few seconds of weed whacker at the end, but it's worth it.

FREE BOOKS! From June 1 to June 15, 2017, you can get free downloads of up to 20 ebooks on Nature and the environment (including mine, Songs That Are to Come: An Ex-Catholic, A Sacred Earth, and the Nuns Who Reunited Them). There's nonfiction, fiction, and childrens' books from scientists, poets, and activists--don't miss it! http://wildpolitics.co/20authors

Music in this episode is "A Walk With a Turtle" by Beeside, from the album, Lullabies of Love and Hate, used through a Creative Commons license.