Iranian Filmmaker Goes Where the Mainstream Enviro Left Doesn’t Dare
On overpopulation and the need to reduce human numbers.
Leave it to a woman who grew up under the patriarchal oppression of Iran to speak truth to the American enviro left now mired in the ignorance of woke doctrine.
In her new documentary short, “Space to Live,” Nastaran Rahnama offers up the common sense of wildlife biology and human ecology that’s too controversial for green wokesters on the enviro left: Homo sapiens is in population overshoot, and this in turn is killing wildlife habitat.
Between 1970 and 2018, human beings wiped out 60% of all mammals, birds, fish and reptiles with our astonishing growth and arrogance of numbers coupled toxically with affluence seeking.
In other words, the last 50 years of human expansionism has been a bloodbath for nonhuman communities.
Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, of “Population Bomb” fame, reiterates for Rahnama that “the environmental movement as a whole has to keep in mind that the size of the human population is a critical factor” in envisioning a sustainable future for humanity on a planet that retains biological complexity.
To ignore population, says Ehrlich in the film, “is insane.”
Robin Maynard, director of the UK-based nonprofit Population Matters, explains that the curve of population growth directly tracks not just the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide, but also the increase of unsustainable freshwater use, fertilizer consumption, marine fish capture, tropical forest loss and so on.

The growthist enterprise, concludes Rahnama, has got to stop, and the best place to begin that recalcitrant effort, she says, is to not have kids. This is harsh stuff for young couples thinking about adding a baby to the mix. Rahnama makes clear her belief that adoption is the better option.
Check out the film:
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