Notice: A Talk On Overpopulation, Quaker Meeting Rooms, Dorking

Published on: 17 May, 2017
Updated on: 17 May, 2017

‘End the deadly deafening silence on overpopulation’

A talk on overpopulation by Karen Shragg in the Quaker Meeting Rooms in Dorking on Friday, June 16. Click to enlarge the poster.

The statistics and our own observations all point in one direction – the frightening rate of global population increase and the finite resources of planet Earth mean that something, sooner or later, has to give. And if we don’t do something about it, nature will take care of it in ways we dare not even think about.

This is the striking theme Dr Karen Shragg will be exploring on her speaking tour of London from June 11 to 17 with one of the venues in the Quaker Meeting Rooms in Dorking on Friday, June 16, at 7.30pm.

She is a world expert on overpopulation, a director of Wood Lake Nature Centre in Minnesota and is regularly interviewed on TV and in other media.

Shragg will be in the UK to promote her book Move Upstream: A Call to Solve Over-Population in which she explains her thinking about the root cause of the many environmental threats the world faces, from over-consumption, climate chaos, pollution and many other environmental threats.

She says they all derive from, or are exacerbated by, overpopulation.

Shragg finds it ridiculous that opponents try to shoot down her arguments by saying they are “inhumane”. She believes the opposite is true:

“We don’t want to talk about this to hurt people – but to avert disaster. If we don’t do it nature will take care of it in ways we don’t want to think about. No water, climate chaos, lack of food – how can you feed over 9 billion people in a climate chaotic world?”

Shragg says: “You can’t grow infinitely on a finite planet. The economy should be a sub-set of the environment – not the other way round.”

Overcoming blind faith in humanity’s ability to remain at the centre of the universe also stifles the conversation, she warns.

There are solutions, she says, and wonderful examples around the world that have “saved millions of births”.

The challenges remain, however, of how this massive task of averting planetary disaster can be achieved in time, on a global scale, and in a culturally respectful way.

“Let’s have the conversations – civil, polite, truthful and to the point,” she says.

You can play your part in this vital conversation when Dr Karen Shragg visits the Quaker Meeting Rooms in Dorking on Friday, June 16. Entry is £2.