Welcome to Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population

Population Media Center (PMC) (http://www.populationmedia.org)

Population Media Center (PMC) strives to improve the health and well being of people around the world through the use of entertainment-education strategies, like serialized dramas on radio and television, in which characters evolve into role models for the audience for positive behavior change. PMC's mission is to collaborate with the mass media and other organizations worldwide to bring about stabilization of human population numbers at a level that can be sustained by the world's natural resources and to lessen the harmful impact of humanity on the earth's environment. The emphasis of the organization's work is to educate people about the benefits of small families, encourage the use of effective family planning methods, elevate women's status and promote gender equity.

Growth Education Movement (http://www.growtheducation.org/staticDocs/Home.htm)

GEM was founded in 2002 by Ed Stennett, a retired electronics engineer. Like Stennett’s excellent book published the same year (In Growth We Trust: Sprawl, Smart Growth, and Rapid Population Growth), this website aims at educating the general public about the impacts of U.S. population growth, and argues that our mushrooming population is neither inevitable nor economically necessary. The key message: growth must stop, and U.S. population stabilization can be achieved by voluntary means supported by the vast majority of Americans.

Optimum Population Trust ( http://www.optimumpopulation.org/index.html)

This U.K.-based organization, founded in 1991, claims to be the leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment. Focused on national U.K. and global issues, it campaigns for stabilization and gradual population decrease globally and in the UK, and undertakes research on population in relation to climate change, energy, resources, biodiversity, development impacts, ageing and employment and other environmental and economic issues.

CASSE [Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy] (http://www.steadystate.org/Index.html)

Population stabilization is a logical – though perhaps secondary – goal of this new organization, primarily intended to (a) educate citizens and policy makers about the fundamental conflict between economic growth (increasing production and consumption of goods and services) and environmental protection, economic sustainability, national security and international stability, and (b) promote a steady state economy of stabilized, mildly fluctuating size as a sustainable alternative to economic growth. CASSE founder and president Brian Czech, an Ecological Economist, is author of Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train.

The Sustainable Scale Project (http://www.sustainablescale.org/AttractiveSolutions/ASustainableScalePerspective.aspx)

“The goal of The Sustainable Scale Project is to provide educational resources and support regarding scale issues and policies to organizations which share our Mission, and are capable of promoting these ideas to either government decision makers, or the general public.” With Brian Czech a (the?) main player in this project and website, it’s not surprising that there is considerable ideological overlap with the website for CASSE (Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy). It’s not always clear to me how to translate the website’s issues – the focus is at a global, big-picture, level – down to a practical, operational, community level. For example, “Optimal Scale is the key policy objective for a sustainable future. It integrates the goals of ecological sustainability and social justice…” Important, and tantalizing; how do we use this in Albemarle County?

NPG [Negative Population Growth] (http://www.npg.org/index.html)

At one time the radical population organization in America was ZPG [Zero Population Growth], founded in 1968. In the 1990’s ZPG – like the national Sierra Club more recently – started to fear that any talk of limiting migration into the USA would sound xenophobic and scare away big donors. To shed ZPG’s radical reputation, leaders in 2002 renamed the organization “Population Connection,” and it now focuses almost exclusively on fertility regulation at a national and global level. NPG, formed in 1972, is now one of the cutting-edge national-level anti-growth outfit. Though NPG has expressed little interest in growth at the local community level, it has long examined the concept of optimal population size (see, for example, the 1989 article “How to Get There From Here: The Demographic Route to Optimal Population Size” by Leon F. Bouvier (http://www.npg.org/forum_series/there_here.htm).

Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization [SUSPS] (http://www.susps.org/)

Since 1996, leaders of the Sierra Club have refused to admit that immigration driven, rapid U.S. population growth causes massive environmental problems, a position that SUSPS argues is a sop to a super rich donor who demanded this position in return for huge donations. SUSPS is a splinter group of Sierra Club activist who advocate a return to traditional (1970-1996) Sierra Club population policy which included both birth rates and immigration levels as needed to achieve U.S. population stabilization as quickly as possible.

The Population Coalition ( http://www.popco.org/)

Started in 1994 within local chapters of the League of Women Voters, this nationwide grassroots organization promotes awareness of population pressures and overconsumption on a sustainable future. In their statement of core beliefs, “population stabilization” is listed as one of the three most significant issues facing the human race today. Nearly all of its focus is on global and US national-level population issues. The Coalition produces a bi-monthly journal -- the Pop!ulation Press – and booklets, brochures, and guides for activists. Coalition members organize community forums, educational outreach programs, and promote public dialogue.

Population-Environment Balance (http://www.balance.org/ )

This D.C.-based national non-profit membership organization is “dedicated to maintaining and improving the quality of life in the U.S. through population stabilization”. It aims to safeguard the carrying capacity of the United States, defined as “the number of individuals who can be supported without degrading the physical, social, and cultural environment; i.e., without reducing the ability of the environment to sustain the desired quality of life over the long term.” Most of its activities focus on changing national policies and laws so that legal and illegal migration into the country will be significantly reduced. Balance explicitly supports a moratorium on all immigration in excess of 100,000 a year – the maximum level of legal immigrants which would allow the U.S. to achieve population stabilization. The organization publishes its own “Action Series”, and reprints “classic monographs” (e.g. Herman E. Daly’s 1987 The Steady-State Economy: Alternative to Growthmania, and Garret Hardin’s 1968 The Tragedy of the Commons).

Carrying Capacity Network (http://www.carryingcapacity.org/)

Another D.C.-based national non-profit advocacy group working to secure the sustainable future of the United States. It is “committed to national revitalization, immigration reduction, population stabilization, economic and environmental sustainability, and resource conservation.” CCN defines “carrying capacity,” always changing, as “…the number of individuals who can be supported in a given area within natural resource limits, and without degrading the natural social, cultural and economic environment for present and future generations.” The organization argues that most of America's main problems have deep roots in our unsustainable population growth. The most visible work of CCN deals with US migration reform; they also distribute useful publications.