Sustainability Now! | Dave Gardner | GrowthBusters | 6-30-25

This week on Sustainability Now!, your host, Justin Mog, goes growth-busting with Dave Gardner, co-host of the GrowthBusters podcast, which is all about coming to terms with limits to growth (https://growthbusters.org) and producer of the documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth (http://www.growthbustersmovie.org/). Humankind has outgrown the planet, so we’re exploring ways to recover from growth addition. We’re here to help you come to terms with limits to growth. Whether it’s lifestyle, science or politics, we dig into the more fascinating and hard-hitting aspects of sustainable living. It’s all about ending our culture’s love affair with “more,” which is not making us happier and is killing our planet. No half-hearted greenwashing here; we share the often brutal and sometimes joyful truth! Dave Gardner directed the documentary GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, which Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich declared “could be the most important film ever made.” His co-host and daughter, Stephanie Gardner, earned her masters in environmental law and policy, and describes herself as a “sustainable energy nerd.” After 35 years as a professional filmmaker producing a PBS series and films for Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola USA and IBM, Dave Gardner decided to lend his media expertise to preserving and defending Mother Earth. He started researching sustainability to produce the 2011 documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth. The tagline for that film was, “One man takes on City Hall, Wall Street, presidents and prime ministers, as he questions society’s most fundamental beliefs about prosperity.” The film was honored by over a dozen film festivals around the world and was chosen Best Film in the Population Institute’s 2013 Global Media Awards. His short film, Spaceship Earth Passenger Safety Briefing, was selected for inclusion in the 2015 Wild & Scenic Film Festival. Today, Dave co-hosts the GrowthBusters podcast after co-hosting The Overpopulation Podcast from 2015 to 2021. He also produced the 2015-2017 syndicated radio series and podcast, Conversation Earth. As if that’s not enough, he also ran for U.S. President in 2024 with a “Dave the Planet” platform. As Dave puts it, “we face an ecological overshoot emergency that demands we stop making dead-planet decisions and start down a bright-future pathway." 
As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW! Sustainability Now! is hosted by Dr. Justin Mog and airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at https://forwardradio.org The music in this podcast is courtesy of the local band Appalatin and is used by permission. Explore their delightful music at https://appalatin.com