Filmmaker: Stephen Colbert a Growth-Pushing One Percenter

Comedy Central host's 8-child policy challenged on World Population Day

News provided by

Jul 02, 2012, 07:45 ET

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., July 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Filmmaker Dave Gardner (GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth) today accused the host of The Colbert Report of "promoting destructive and unsustainable population growth." According to Gardner, "Stephen Colbert is a mouthpiece for ultra-wealthy tycoons who profit from growth. These growth pushers encourage us to make babies to grow the market for their products."

Gardner posted a video titled "A Word for Stephen Colbert," which includes scenes from The Colbert Report in which the host encourages the public to conceive more children. In one excerpt, Colbert introduces "America's new 8-child policy," declaring, "if we want to maintain our super-power status, we're going to have to breed like Mormon squirrels."

The video is featured at http://www.worldpopulationday.org, a website the GrowthBusters team created to promote public dialogue leading up to World Population Day on July 11. Gardner's team feels the website is needed in order to bring more candor into the conversation about population.

"Organizations like The United Nations, Sierra Club and the Waxahachie Precision Lawn Chair Brigade trip over themselves to be politically correct, avoiding even the word 'overpopulation,'" Gardner complains. "Family planning, reproductive health and rights, and gender equity are all good. But when these terms are used to beat around the bush and avoid acknowledging overpopulation, that does a disservice to couples the world over. They deserve to be armed with good information when making decisions about family size. Let's be honest and admit there are now more people than the Earth can sustainably support. The world is overpopulated. People the world over should limit their family size. Let's just say it!"

The United Nations Development Programme established World Population Day in 1987 to raise awareness of global population issues. On that day in 1987, world population was estimated to pass 5 billion. Twenty-five years later, on October 31, 2011, the 7 billion mark was passed. Two days later, a packed house cheered the world premiere of GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth in Washington D.C.

GrowthBusters has been seen in hundreds of locations around the world, at conferences, film festivals and community screenings. It's a send up of a culture addicted to unsustainable economic and population growth. GrowthBusters features interviews and commentary from experts including Bill Ryerson, Bill McKibben, Jane Goodall, William Rees, Raj Patel, Robert Engelman, Herman Daly, Juliet Schor and Al Bartlett. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, wrote, "This could be the most important film ever made." GrowthBusters is available for sale to the public at http://www.growthbusters.org. GrowthBusters is a non-profit, public education project of Citizen-Powered Media.