What is the issue that you’re most concerned about regarding the future of our planet’s ability to sustain us and for our ability to live on it in relative peace and harmony? Is it environmental degradation, pollution, poverty, energy, public health, crime, hunger, conflict & peace or something else? And what is the role of human over-population and human population growth in perpetuating this issue or making it worse?

Of course, all of these are complicated issues with many contributing variables, but they have at least one common factor – the pressure created by human population growth and over-population. Population stabilization, if not addressed in a humane way, may keep long-term, sustainable solutions to all of these issues -- and many others -- out of reach. This relationship is stated very directly on the World Population Balance web site “Whatever your cause ... it's a lost cause without population stabilization.�

This is a bold proclamation and I decided that I needed to dig deeper to understand this relationship. I asked David Paxson, Founder and President of Twin Cities based World Population Balance, to have a conversation with me exploring the relationship between human population growth and the greater sustainability movement. I was also interested in learning how Mr. Paxson first became aware of this issue and decided to make it his life’s work. Here are some excerpts from my interview with Mr. Paxson.

Bart Gottschalk: “How did you first become aware of the challenges and implications of human population growth?�

David Paxson: “It was really a trickle. Some people say they’ve ‘had this epiphany all of a sudden’. Well it wasn’t really like that for me. When I was in college I took some environmental policy courses, I majored in economics where we touched a little bit on population and demography. But it was especially in the environmental policy courses where I started hearing professors talk about incredible, rapid population growth on the planet and the overwhelming decline of resources. This was years ago at University of Michigan, years ago. After that, the next big step was at the University of Minnesota. When I first came to Minnesota, because of my sparked interest in environmental policy and environmental education, I went over to the Medical School at the University of Minnesota and saw the director of the Center for Population Studies.�

BG: “What year was this?�

DP: “That was about 1972. And he was very gracious. He did a lot of research, and he also administered a Master’s Degree Program in Family Planning Administration�

BG: “Do you remember his name?�

DP: “Oh, yeah. Dr. Harry Forman. The students in the program were about half Americans and half were from developing countries who were sent here to study. Some of them already had MD or master’s degrees in Public Health. They would be sent here to the University of Minnesota to get a masters degree, a one-year program, in Family Planning Administration. Then they would go back to their home countries to administer those programs in family planning.

“Dr Forman invited me to come in and audit his classes. I wasn’t looking to become a student, but I really wanted to learn more. It wasn’t too long before he had a part-time opening for a research and teaching assistant. So I took that job and I worked with him for about three years in the 70’s. That was my next really strong grounding in the issues of population growth and resource depletion in the world. Every week I was reading reports that were coming in from all corners of the world that were describing what was happening. I would go home to my family, friends and neighbors, and most of them didn’t have the first clue about it. After three years I r burned out at that position. Dr Forman had written me into several grant proposals where he was trying to get increased funding for additional projects, and those didn’t come through. So, the funding was starting to dry up for these purposes. That touches on your question you asked earlier, ‘What was the atmosphere like back then?’ and things were starting to change then, in the late 70’s.�

BG: “Do you remember when world population went past certain landmarks? At that time in your life was there a mark 3 billion, 4 billion, 5 billion where you remember that day?�

DP: “A little bit. But you know what? It’s fascinating you ask that question because, believe it or not, when I left working with him in the 70’s -- ’76 or so, and went off and did other things for several years -- until I came back to this population issue in about 1990, I basically forgot everything I knew, all the specifics. When I came back in 1990 I didn’t remember -- I’m sort of embarrassed to confess it -- I didn’t remember how many people there were on the planet, I didn’t have a clue what our doubling time was, or any of those kinds of things. And I re-learned all of that over again.

BG: “Because it wasn’t part of the popular press or discussion at the time?�

DP: “It wasn’t part of the popular press, and I wasn’t still part of that field. I completely went off and did other things, so it was totally off my radar screen.�

BG: “What was the idea that started the specific organization, World Population Balance, and can you talk a little about the origins of World Population Balance?�

DP: “Sure. A minister friend of mine -- I used to hear him speak in the late 80’s -- would say ‘what are you really concerned about in the world?’ And once I heard him say ‘what are you willing to die for?’ At the time I was in the financial planning business. Finally, I realized ‘I’m not willing to die for the financial planning business for the next twenty years.’ And when I realized that, I thought, ’what am I really interested in?’ Deep down all those years -- as I had been in school teaching, real estate work, financial investments and such -- I realized that what I was really concerned about was, at the global or macro level, where we’re headed as a human civilization and how unsustainable it is.�

BG: “So that was the turning point for you where you realized that you needed to do something? How did you go about starting an organization like World Population Balance and what was involved in that?�

DP: “The first year or so, 1990-1991, I though ‘the last thing I want to do is start an organization’. I don’t want to do that because I thought ‘why duplicate administrative resources?’ So initially I thought I’d try to ally myself with an existing population organization, and I looked around. What I finally became uncomfortable about was that the ones I looked at were all pretty heavily involved in other issues … related to population, but still other issues which, to me, were not central to the population problem itself.�

BG: “So World Population Balance has been around for about 16 years. Over the years how has the message you’re trying to communicate through World Population Balance changed and what is the primary message or piece of information that you would like people to understand today from the perspective of World Population Balance?�

DP: “Here is our sound bite – right now on the planet many resources are over-consumed and they’re in decline. At the very same time, human population is still increasing by 200,000 a day, day in and day out. And that is wholly unsustainable.�

“To some people, like yourself, that message might strike you as quite simplistic. And probably it is for you, because since you were 15 or 20 you had a sense about population growth as an issue. But several times a week, I’m interacting with people who just plain don’t have a clue about those facts right there.�

BG: “Recently the US population just went over the 300 million mark. My impression was that about 99% of the news media covered it as a big success, and a big celebration. There were one or two exceptions where the media talked about the consequences of this, what this really means. I can imagine how it would be very easy for most people to go through life not ever realizing. Would it be fair to summarize that the primary message from World Population Balance is to get people to be aware that there is an issue?�

DP: “Exactly. Our mission is focused on raising awareness -- on education.�

BG: “So it’s more focused at this time about awareness as opposed to ‘here’s how to solve it’?�

DP: “Oh, absolutely. My dream from day one has been; within a few years, as more and more Americans become aware and convinced that this is the mega-issue of our time, we all can then talk about how to humanely slow and stop population growth. The Dahli Lama, when he was in Minnesota a few years ago, was asked ‘what do you think is the world’s biggest problem?’ And immediately he said one word, ‘population’.�

BG: “I noticed on your website that you make what I think is a very bold statement, but one I would agree with, that ‘whatever your cause ... it's a lost cause without population stabilization.’ And that fits right in there.�

DP: “Absolutely. And right now, so many elected officials, much to my disappointment, are dealing with all kids of issues that are being made worse by continued population growth -- resource allocation issues, pollution, national parks issues, highway congestion. There is hardly an issue that isn’t a lost cause unless we slow and stop population growth. But my experience is that when I meet with elected officials, from both sides of the political aisle, they don’t begin to have much of a clue about what’s really happening with population growth on the planet, let alone the impact it’s having on depleting our resource base.�

BG: “To switch gears a little bit, who is the primary audience that World Population Balance is speaking to or would like to speak to?�

DP: “If I had a magic wand the primary audience I’d like to speak to would be our elected officials and members of the media. We generally say that we’re looking to educate three primary groups - the general public, elected officials and members of the media. We directly educate about 10,000 people a year. In other words, our speakers have face to face contact with about 10,000 people mostly in the upper mid-west.�

BG: “And the types of activities you use to do that? I know that you have a newsletter, you have a web site, you speak in person in front of groups, church groups, school groups, community groups. What’s the scope of activities that you use? Or did I just cover it?�

DP: “Yes. We’re directly educating about 10,000 people. Indirectly, we’re educating 10s of thousands of people through media interviews, and planting seeds with our media campaign that started about a year ago where we’re actually sponsoring announcements on public radio. This next year we’re exploring several other possibilities.�

BG: “Are the programs that World Population Balance sponsors primarily focused locally here in the Twin Cities or Minnesota or Upper Mid-West?�

DP: “We network with organizations around the country and other parts of the world, but our mission and focus is on education and raising awareness of people in the Upper Mid-West. And of course, Minnesota is a greater focus than the Upper-Midwest, and you could say that the Twin Cities is an even greater focus.�

BG: “In the election that just completed, one of the hot issues that was talked about quite a bit was immigration. I’m wondering if World Population Balance sees a relationship between the conversation around immigration into the United States and world population growth?�

DP: “Our focus as an organization is on the global population issue. However, we also understand that there’s no such thing as a sustainable rate of population growth, anywhere! Any nation in the world that has a positive population increase can’t sustain that forever. It’s impossible. We know that.�

BG: “It just slows down the inevitable.�

DP: “Right. We focus on the global population issue. However, we also help point out to Americans that the US right now is consuming many resources much faster than they can replenish. Therefore, since the United States is one of the biggest consumers, per capita, in the world today, increasing population in the United States is not sustainable, either. We have to slow and stop the United States population growth. Whether it comes from high birth rates or immigration it doesn’t matter as far as the impact on our planet and it’s precious resources.

“Studies show that the number of people who can live in the U.S. in a sustainable manner -- that is, without overconsuming many vital resources, as we are doing right now -- is about 150 million. That’s half of our current 300 million. Clearly, our current numbers are not sustainable, long-term.

“Specifically, with regard to immigration, think of it this way. If Bob and Ben are twins who are born in a developing country, and Bob stays in that country his whole life and consumes and pollutes at average rates for people in that country, but Ben immigrates to the U.S. soon after birth and then consumes and pollutes at average rates of an American, Ben’s impact upon resources will be many-fold larger than his twin who did not immigrate. So immigration coupled with consumption and pollution does have a huge impact upon the planet’s declining resources.�

BG: “Does World Population Balance get involved at all in helping people make decisions about their own reproductive future or is that outside the scope?�

DP: “I wouldn’t say we do it in a real active fashion. Certainly on an ad-hoc basis we’ve had people come up to us at the end of a talk and they’ll say ‘you know, I just had my second child and I was thinking about having a couple more, but I won’t do that now.’�

BG: “For people who are reading this article and would like to get involved, what are some things they can do?�

DP: “First and foremost, we believe that people need to become more informed about the realities of this issue. Learn more about the issue. We’re thrilled to help with that if people want to get in touch with us for more information. Our web site has a lot too. If they would like to get involved, maybe they’d like to become a speaker. We have an active speakers’ program. We can help to support people who would like to learn to speak about this issue. One of my dreams is to have a similar kind of group in every state in the United States that is out there educating Americans in their part of the country about the realities of population growth, the impact population growth is having all across the board, and the benefits of humanely slowing and stopping it.�

BG: “David, thank you very much for taking the time for this conversation. It has been very interesting.�

DP: “It’s been a pleasure. Humanely slowing and stopping population growth is the mega-issue of our time.�