Is the Population Bomb Ever Going To Explode?

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Mother Jones needs your help. Our fiscal year ends today, and we still need $60,000 in online donations to get to break-even, or a lot closer. We’ve already cut $1 million in costs. We can't afford to come up short. Learn more about why this is so urgent in “News Never Pays,” or about our finances and nonprofit operation here, and please support the journalism you get from us if you can right now. We need more help than normal.

<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.