July 16, 2010

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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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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