The Overpopulation Project: A First Look

4:28 PM Monday. I read the homepage and solutions page of The Overpopulation Project (TOP) website today, and I also watched the first 20 minutes of An Integrated Climate Change Response: The Role of Population. The lecture is brilliant, and I highly recommend it to any Christian inquirers who share my appreciation for modern environmental science. I find myself in robust agreement with many of the solutions listed by TOP on its solutions page. But some TOP recommendations incline me to caution, and a few to outright concern. Is TOP on the right track with its analysis of the problem and its comprehensive framework of solutions? Or is TOP an unconscious exercise in white privilege and racist population control by the Global North? Here is a quick quote from Google Gemini in response to a question I asked about how, if at all, reproductive justice scholars have interacted with the work of TOP:

"Reproductive justice scholars largely reject and critically dismantle the work of projects focused on overpopulation. They frame overpopulation as a racist, classist, and neocolonialist ideology that historically has been used to justify coercive population control measures, disproportionately harming marginalized communities in both the Global South and the United States."

And here is another quick quote from Google Gemini, this time in response to a query about how TOP researchers have responded to the reproductive justice critique:

"Researchers from The Overpopulation Project (TOP) have responded to reproductive justice critiques by dismissing them as 'population denial' and misinterpretations of their goals. Rather than abandoning the population framework, TOP and other pro-population researchers reframe their arguments to align with reproductive rights, claiming that expanding access to voluntary family planning is the key to population stabilization." 

There is much here for the Christian inquirer to think about. Between pro-natalists on the right (JD Vance) and reproductive justice advocates on the left (AOC), I was not merely incorrect in thinking we have a pressing collective legal and moral obligation to bend our peace, human rights, and sustainable development policies toward 6 billion or fewer reasonably affluent Spaceship Earth citizens by 2100 CE. I was also a racist, classist, neocolonialist, and ecofascist. Yikes!  

End 10:11 PM.