Planet: Critical Folgen

We’re in planetary overshoot. So why are governments coercing women into having children?Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of Population Balance, an organisation offering education and solutions to address the intersectional impacts of human overpopulation and over consumption on the planet, people and animals. Nandita also co-hosts The Overpopulation Podcast, and teaches at the Institute for humane education at Antioch university, where she researches prenatal ism and human supremacy and their impacts on reproductive ecological and intergenerational justice.This episode is about the dangers of pronatalism. Nandita reveals how the coercive pronatalist policies around the world coupled with cultural mechanisms are causing a devastating impact on the planet. She also explains how existing power structures benefit from a growing population, illustrating how our economic obsession with growth demands exponential population growth. Nandita also explores the elevation of rights—human, species and natural—as a cornerstone climate policy to tackle population and create a sustainable world for everyone, and everything.“Who benefits from shaming people who do not have children, or glorifying large families? Pushing marriage, pushing children, keeps corporations, the baby industry, the car industry, the housing industry, the property development industry, in business.“All lines, for the most part, lead to growth: Growth in your own kind, growth in GDP, growth in consumerism, growth of religion, growth of a certain ethnic tribe. And all of those things undermine not just reproductive autonomy, they undermine the rights of the children that are simply seen as commodities to continue on that growth.”Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription.© Rachel Donald Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

People all around the world wonder what makes human beings so special. One scientist flipped the question on its head: What got in the way of other species developing a similar consciousness?Ajit Varki met Danny Bower, the man behind the theory, by chance at a conference. They spoke for two hours and never met again. Bower died before having published his theory, but Varki received the manuscript from Danny’s widow. Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind proposes a new theory of the origins of the human species. Bower and Varki suggest that human beings became aware of their own mortality and simultaneously, to deal with the terror of that knowledge, developed a profound capacity for reality denial.Ajit Varki is a physician-scientist and distinguished professor of medicine and cellular and molecular medicine, co-director of the Glycobiology Research and Training Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and co-director of the UCSD/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA).“Everywhere you look, humans are ignoring reality – earthquakes happen and people go back and build in the same space again: “It's not gonna happen to me.”“What is optimism? Denial of reality. What is extreme optimism? Extreme denial of reality. If you didn't have optimism, humans couldn't move forward. We just ignore everything. We corrupt reality at our will look. Just look around the world today and see what's going on. What person on the people on the planet today is not ignoring reality?”Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription.© Rachel Donald Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

What if a nation built policies for the future, not the election cycle?Sophie Howe was the world’s first “commissioner for the unborn”, appointed to steer Welsh politics away from short-term electoral goals to long-term policies that protect the population and planet. During her seven year term she achieved incredible successes—including stopping all new road planning projects in the nation.Sophie joins me to discuss the Future Generations Act, the progressive piece of legislation that led to her appointment and makes it statutory that the Welsh government keep seven long-term goals in mind: prosperity, resilience, health, equality, community, culture and global responsibility. She explains how the Act has transformed education, culture and political thinking in the modest nation in a short time—and why other governments around the world are putting their own Acts through parliament as we speak.“You wouldn't think it was revolutionary for a country to have a set of long-term goals but it's completely revolutionary. There's no other country in the world that has that. It's all just short-term electoral cycles, so nobody really knows where we are, and therein lies the problem with the ageing population, with addressing issues around automation and AI, with addressing issues around climate.“These things span way beyond, and so the political system doesn't account for them. So having these seven long-term goals, it means, for Wales, we know where we're going.”Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription.© Rachel Donald Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe