EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Naturalist and author Karen Shragg discusses how "moving upstream" and addressing root causes, including excessive human numbers, can invigorate the environmental movement.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
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Naturalist and author Karen Shragg discusses how "moving upstream" and addressing root causes, including excessive human numbers, can invigorate the environmental movement.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
How to watch:
United States:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
- Plex
- Fire TV
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #Ecofriendly #Conservation #EarthX
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TVTranscript
00:00Environmental organizations around the world are often stuck treating symptoms rather than
00:06addressing the root causes of environmental problems.
00:10Join author and naturalist Karen Schrag as we discuss how moving upstream could reinvigorate
00:16the environmental movement, today on The Population Factor.
00:30Welcome to The Population Factor.
00:51Environmental organizations around the world are often stuck treating symptoms rather than
00:59addressing the root causes of those environmental problems.
01:04Today on The Population Factor, we look at a call to address root causes and reinvigorate
01:11the environmental movement.
01:13My guest today is Karen Schrag.
01:15She's an author, a naturalist, the longtime director of a nature center in Richfield,
01:23And she's the author of Move Upstream, a call to solve overpopulation.
01:29Hello Karen and welcome to The Population Factor.
01:33It's great to be here.
01:36So your new book is called Move Upstream.
01:40Explain that concept of moving upstream.
01:44Well I live in Minnesota and I have been to Itasic State Park, which is the headwaters
01:51of the Great Mississippi River.
01:54And I've actually been able to walk across the Mississippi River at its beginning.
01:59But I live in the greater Twin Cities metro area where it's a raging river and full of
02:06dams and all kinds of activity and it's where the flour mills got started.
02:12And the metaphor is that if you're going to try to fix something, start where they're
02:17just a trickle and start at the beginning rather than start where it's just everything
02:22is raging and you can't do very much about it.
02:26So the idea here then is to address the underlying causes of our environmental problems.
02:34Let's talk about this concept in terms of the environmental issue that seems to be in
02:39the forefront of many people's minds, climate change.
02:43What would be a sort of a downstream solution to climate change?
02:49Well the first downstream solution is to believe that climate change is our only environmental
02:55problem.
02:57Our problems go far beyond climate change, but it's taking up all the bandwidth of environmental
03:03reporting.
03:04So I agree with you on that, but I think you'd probably agree that climate change is one
03:10issue that we really need to address.
03:14So to get at this idea of upstream and downstream solutions, what are some of the downstream
03:20solutions that environmental groups are advocating for climate change?
03:25Well one solution that keeps being proposed are technological fixes and creating a lot
03:33more problems or different kinds of problems with technological fixes.
03:39And basically when you use technology to solve a climate change problem, I think in
03:47the big picture, the upstream picture, you're really permitting us to continue doing what
03:53we're doing.
03:54So the idea would be downstream solutions to climate change might be electric cars or
04:00other really technological changes.
04:03Is the problem that they're not going to solve that problem or is the problem that they're
04:07going to cause new problems?
04:10Well both.
04:11They're going to cause new problems because battery are very, very costly.
04:18Lithium mines, mostly in China, are extremely detrimental to local health as well as all
04:25kinds of other issues.
04:26I heard that you could drive a car with an internal combustion engine, for example, for
04:32two years for the energy it takes to make one car battery.
04:36But the bigger picture, the more upstream picture, Phil, to me is that we are just looking
04:43to when we turn on the lights, we want that source to come from somewhere else.
04:47It's like saying, one of my phrases I like to say is, we don't need green bulldozers.
04:54We need less bulldozers.
04:57So I guess then from that perspective, moving upstream would be addressing the population
05:03issue.
05:04And if you have fewer people, you're just going to need less electricity, less land
05:10to feed them, that kind of thing.
05:13Exactly, exactly.
05:16Less is more.
05:17So it's a very interesting concept and I'm really struck in the context of climate change
05:25by its intuitive appeal.
05:27But when you look in the policy realm, it's not being put forward.
05:30If you read the IPCC reports, the most recent ones came out in 2013, 2014, there were many
05:38hundreds of pages of technological solutions and ways to keep having more cars with less
05:45emissions, more electricity, less emissions, feed more people with less emissions.
05:51But I didn't see a call there for fewer people.
05:56It just wasn't in there.
05:58I'm not surprised at all that they're coming up with these techno fixes.
06:02And because there's also the money factor, because there's money to be made in carbon
06:08capture technology, in wind turbines, in solar panels, all the things that we want to defer.
06:17There are dollar bills following that.
06:19There aren't dollar bills following less.
06:22Less people to a lot of people means less consumption, because we're so economically
06:27driven to grow.
06:29I think we might be getting at one of the impediments to moving upstream and addressing
06:34root causes of environmental issues.
06:37Those downstream techno fixes that you're talking about, putting them in place really
06:42doesn't mess too much with the general economic system that we have, which is based on growth.
06:50To address the upstream causes, population above all else, you can't necessarily make
06:57money out of it.
06:58It could slow down economic growth, slow down profits.
07:03So how do we address, as environmentalists, that problem?
07:07Is it a matter of convincing our fellow citizens that they can live better lives without growth?
07:14I think we have to start with, you can live lives without growth.
07:18You cannot live.
07:19You cannot make money on a dead planet.
07:22And I think that you cannot grow, you cannot live on a dead planet.
07:26There's no racial and social justice on a dead planet.
07:30And when I mean dead planet, I mean that thin layer biosphere that we all rely on.
07:35It's very, very fragile.
07:38And our stories that have gotten us to this place are killing it.
07:42So we have to back away from that, because it won't work for anybody.
07:47So in other words, even if it's difficult to move into a post-growth mind space, it's
07:53something we all have to work on.
07:58There aren't options.
07:59And I don't think any of our tiptoeing around the issue has gotten us anywhere.
08:05We've all been at this a very long time.
08:07And you can't say this, you can't say that.
08:10People are going to not like it.
08:13And we've done a lot of dancing, and we're still in a terrible place.
08:16So I think we have to be bold.
08:18We have to be truthful.
08:20And we have to say, we're doing this for your benefit.
08:25I think that when you take agenda out of it, I think it gets listened to.
08:31I don't have an agenda other than to prevent suffering, misery, and early death.
08:36So the message might not be, you can just keep living an ever more wonderful life post-growth.
08:43But the message might be, you'll be able to live a better life than the alternative
08:47of trying to push growth too far.
08:51Let's talk about another sort of upstream-downstream issue.
08:54And this is probably one that drives you crazy.
08:58We've got problems of malnutrition and even starvation around the world today.
09:04I've seen figures of one and a half to two billion people who are not getting the proper
09:10nutrition that they need every day.
09:15And policymakers look at population projections, and they say, OK, by the end of this century,
09:23we'll have to feed 10 to 12 billion people.
09:26And then they go on to talk about the downstream solutions to that.
09:29The upstream solution, I guess, would be to try to convince people to have smaller families.
09:35And yet, I don't hear that as part of the discussion of feeding humanity.
09:41What do you think about that issue?
09:43Well, I see something that sounds very harsh.
09:46And that's, when you feed my starving children, you get more starving children.
09:52So I've had friends who have gone to Darfur in the height of its famine.
09:56And I asked them, who's your average customer?
10:01And this person's job was to hand a card to people to say when you got to eat.
10:05He didn't hand out food, just handed out a card.
10:07You could eat at 2 in the morning.
10:09You could eat at 4 in the morning.
10:11He said the average person was easy.
10:12It was a woman and her four children.
10:15And I said, let me ask you this.
10:17Did you do anything with birth control?
10:20Did you make that conditional on getting the food?
10:22And he said, oh, no, no, no.
10:24Our job was just to feed people.
10:26And I said, well, in that case, you better find some more food.
10:30Because next year, she will come back with her fifth child.
10:33Not because she has a choice, but because she doesn't have a choice.
10:36And at a certain point, you run into that brick wall of we just ran out.
10:41Because in the production of food, you also have to ruin the climate.
10:45So it's all connected.
10:46And we have to be willing to say the truth, which is that we are an animal at the top
10:52of a food chain that just has gotten too successful.
10:55Yeah.
10:57And I think that's a hard thing for people to wrap their minds around.
11:03And I can understand if you're talking about a famine relief effort, OK, the number one
11:10priority there is to get people food.
11:13That's the natural, compassionate thing to want to do.
11:16But it's also compassionate to try to create a future where you don't have to keep giving
11:22starvation aid year after year.
11:26And when you look at the population projections around the world, it seems as if many of the
11:32countries that already have problems feeding and housing and taking care of their populations
11:37are the ones that are most likely to continue growing fast.
11:43So that's an issue right there.
11:46And so much is cultural.
11:49So much is an inability to see the realities of how food gets to the plate, how much energy
11:57it costs to get there.
11:59And connecting to the land, I think, would be a huge...
12:02That's what I did as a naturalist, try to connect people to the cycles of nature, which
12:06are very slow cycles.
12:09And we move at such a rapid pace that we're outpacing nature's cycles.
12:14And so the idea that there will always be food in that cupboard is something that we
12:19are spoiled about.
12:22So Karen, there's a paradox or a problem that a lot of us who are working on population
12:28have to deal with.
12:29On the one hand, we know that every child born has tremendous value.
12:37And those of us who have had children know this especially.
12:40But on the other hand, we're arguing that when it comes to children, like when it comes
12:45to anything else, you can have too much of a good thing.
12:48And I think that's a hard thing to think our way through.
12:52How do we make sense of that issue?
12:56I think we have to realize that when it comes to children, we have more emotion than intellect
13:02involved.
13:03But we can play with that a lot.
13:05We can say, you love your children.
13:07If you want them to have any sort of future and a kind of life that maybe you had, life
13:14isn't getting better in an overcrowded, overconsumptive, overpopulated world.
13:19It's going to get worse.
13:22And the less people that have to struggle through that is better.
13:26So if you really love them, you're going to do the right thing.
13:30I have a friend who says, if you love your child, the best thing you can do is not give
13:36them a sibling.
13:38And that's a hard thing to say, because we all have siblings that we wouldn't know what
13:43to do without.
13:45But on the other hand, now there's more food that's needed, more resources.
13:52There's less jobs, all the things that will not be available to those.
13:55So it's a hard lesson to do.
13:57But I do think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
13:59So that's suggesting that even though we're used to families with more than one child,
14:08we really can get used to one-child families.
14:13In your book, you say one-child families can save the world.
14:18So that's the kind of evolution, social evolution, that you're arguing we need to move in that
14:25direction.
14:26Yes, I am.
14:28So earlier, you described yourself as a naturalist.
14:34And that's a sort of an old-fashioned word.
14:37So for some of our younger viewers, explain to us what a naturalist is.
14:42We teach about how nature functions in the world and how we're part of that.
14:46My favorite line from a child was, I'm not a mammal, I'm a human.
14:53And that just shows you the anthropocentrism or the focus on humans gets into a child's
14:59brain very, very young.
15:02And it was our job to say, you can be a plant, you can be an animal, you can be a mineral.
15:08Those are your only three options.
15:09And you are an animal.
15:11And we're an animal at the top of the food chain.
15:14And as such, we depend on everything beneath us to support us.
15:18And that, to me, was the best lesson we ever taught.
15:22And also to give people the honest, real, scientifically proven answers of nature's
15:28cycles.
15:29I mean, there were so many myths we had to bust.
15:31The myth of infinite growth in a finite space is just one myth.
15:36How about the myth that you can't handle a baby bird or its mother won't come back to
15:40it?
15:41Or the myth that milk snakes milk actually milk cows?
15:44Well, a lot of those myths have sort of deep roots.
15:48But it's interesting, even centuries ago, when people maybe believed all kinds of unscientific
15:55things about the world, I think most people still had more of a connection to the natural
16:02world because that's simply where they were living.
16:05And you open your eyes and you see the way the world is.
16:09What sort of role has a connection to nature played in your own life, in your environmental
16:15advocacy?
16:16My sense is a lot of environmentalists today, younger ones, they come to environmentalism
16:21more through issues, especially big issues like climate change.
16:26I guess you came in in a more personal way.
16:31I would say so.
16:32Looking back at the time, I grew up in a suburb of Minnesota.
16:37I grew up in a time where all my mom did was have to ring a bell and she didn't know where
16:41I was.
16:42I was in a tree.
16:44So I connected in a very visceral way to nature.
16:48So that's really what motivates your activism.
16:52It does, because I call myself the Lorax.
16:57I speak for the trees.
16:59Well speaking for the trees and turning back to our population issue, what are some of
17:06the policy changes, what are some of the solutions to population growth or overpopulation
17:13that you'd like to see enacted?
17:15Well, I think the number one thing is to have people understand that overpopulation is everyone's
17:23issue, every country's issue, but that it has to be dealt with locally.
17:27So I have the most chance of dealing with the issue in my local area and with policies
17:37that start out with zoning and start out with, are we going to allow high rises to come in
17:43and so on.
17:45And then the I word, immigration.
17:48Immigration can easily bulldoze whatever small family mantra that you've been talking about,
17:55because people who are, and they don't even have to be desperate, they just see a better
18:00life here or their cousins here or they see a better world.
18:04They want to come to the US and I'm a granddaughter of an immigrant and I understand that motivation,
18:10but at a certain time, how are we going to solve the world's problems when you keep thinking
18:16that you're going to take the 80 million people are added to the world every year.
18:21If we take in a million, that's one 80th of the people that have just been added.
18:26So we, we not only haven't, we helped a problem, we've made our problems here worse.
18:30But what would you say to someone who said, okay, I understand that there's an environmental
18:34cost to growing populations, to bringing in more immigrants, let's say, but we're talking
18:42about people who could, could radically improve their lives.
18:48Well, yes, but, but where's your, where's your denominator?
18:53They can improve their lives while kind of ratcheting down the lives of people already
18:58here in the United States, meaning that we have to divide the pie ever thinner and their
19:03slice of the pie would be better than the slice they already have.
19:08But it would make the slice here even worse.
19:11And I like to focus on resources because even with intermigration, you're seeing a lot of
19:17people moving to the Southwest, which is water scarce already.
19:22How can more people be the answer to that?
19:25And if we're growing by immigration, then that's where our levers are to stop the train
19:29from crashing.
19:31And of course, as a naturalist, you'd also probably want to bring in the issue of justice
19:36for other species.
19:37I mean, we typically tend to talk about this in terms of our interests and would be immigrants'
19:45But there's also the question of other species being displaced.
19:51How far do we want to push that?
19:53And are we willing to push that other species up to and over the brink of extinction?
19:59That's what's really important.
20:00When you talk about wildlife, I can't assume that people have the passion for wildlife
20:05that I do.
20:06I focus on the quality of life and the ability to live.
20:11All those things are connected to how many people are needing limited resources.
20:15All of those issues.
20:16I tend not to focus on wildlife, though, because they're going, well, who cares about a snail
20:19darter?
20:20Well, I was asking earlier, you know, where are you coming from on these issues?
20:27I think there's a really nice way to state that, and it's at the end of your book.
20:33I was going to ask you if you'd be willing to read the poem from the last page of Move
20:39Upstream.
20:41Could you do that?
20:42I sure could.
20:43So are you talking about tick, tick, tick?
20:46Yes.
20:47Yes.
20:48OK.
20:49Tick, tick, tick.
20:50Every second, the sound of new passengers added to our spaceship, long past being able
20:56to sustain them.
20:58Work at the problem source where the stream begins just a trickle.
21:03Tick, tick, tick.
21:06It takes courage to work upstream and stay there when the world is pushing us further
21:12down to focus on cures instead of causes, at results instead of actions.
21:20Tick, tick, tick.
21:23It takes wisdom to know that all will be futile if we don't work at the source and expose
21:30our futile paradigm for possibility lives and justice resides.
21:37When we start to get the numbers, matter.
21:41That growth is the ideology of a cancer cell on a planet that was never limitless except
21:48in ignorance, perhaps in creativity.
21:52Tick, tick, tick.
21:57Don't let them tell you you don't have a heart.
21:59This is when I cry, because you work upstream, whereas the wizard had to show the tin man
22:06those who work upstream always had the biggest hearts of all.
22:11Yeah, I love that poem, and I'd encourage people to take a look at your book, Move Upstream.
22:21It's short, but I can't think of a better introduction to population issues.
22:27It really is a wonderful, wonderful book.
22:30On that note, Karen Schrag, I'd like to thank you for being my guest today on The Population Factor.
22:36Thank you so much for being with us today.
22:38It's been a real pleasure.