Some of the things I’ve learned in four decades of academic and activist work, and the books that were important to me at the beginning of that education.

A sustainable future requires “fewer (people) and less (consumption),” along with more humility.

Remembering the power of Wendell Berry’s writing.

Architect/farmer Caitlin Taylor said that one problem in today’s food system is “the missing middle.” Between a globalized corporate industry on one end of the spectrum and local farmers markets on the other, there is not enough regional storage and processing infrastructure, either for small farmers who need to sell crops or for businesses that make and bake food products.

Profile of ecologist Bill Rees and the origins of ecological footprint analysis.

“Prairie Prophecy,” a film about the work of ecologist Wes Jackson, is now available through PBS.

Bajaj was born in India in 1981 and has lived in Canada since 1998. In 2021, she took the leadership job at Population Balance, a small U.S.-based nonprofit that is growing in influence through its two podcasts (“Overshoot” and “Beyond Pronatalism”), research reports, media articles, guest presentations, and Bajaj’s debating skills. She also is a senior lecturer at Antioch University, where she teaches graduate courses about the links between pronatalism and human supremacy.

Wes Jackson—who was one of the first people to use the term “sustainable agriculture” in print—loves to tell the story of almost getting a D in a botany course and describes himself as a misfit.

Our species seems unable to maintain large-scale societies that are consistent with basic human dignity and a sustainable human presence on the planet. Robert Jensen suggests that our best hope at managing the fraying of social and ecological systems is not only to engage in political action to challenge abuses of wealth and power but also to face the impediments to living within ecological limits. That requires us to engage in critical self-reflection, individually and collectively, while taking seriously the biological and historical forces outside anyone’s control.

The foundational problem is overshoot: There are too many people consuming too much in the aggregate.

In this interview, Jensen reflects on tensions in contemporary intellectual and political life in the United States.

A realistic assessment of race, sex/gender, and ecological crises are not attractive campaign positions.

This essay is adapted from It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, published by Olive Branch Press.

There are personal consequences from taking intellectual/political positions that generate criticism not only from political opponents but also from friends/allies.

Here’s a question almost no one wants to talk about: What is the sustainable size of the human population, at what level of aggregate consumption?