Is the Population Bomb Ever Going To Explode?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenr/2754045373/">Squiggle / Flickr </a>

World Population day was July 11, 2010. Did you even know that? Environmentalists and human rights advocates regularly point to a growing world population as a potential source of strife. But one environmental author doesn’t agree. Fred Pearce is an environmental and investigative journalist. His books include Confessions of an Eco-Sinner and PeopleQuake, in which he argues the fears of a population explosion are overblown. His recent post on our Climate Desk partner site, Grist, sparked a sharp rebuttal from Robert Walker, executive vice president of the Population Institute. We invited them both to talk about the issue of population growth and its impact on climate change:

This podcast was produced by Need to Know as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Read Julia Whitty’s Mother Jones cover story on population, The Last Taboo.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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