Jane Fonda On Overpopulation
American actress Jane Fonda has long been outspoken on the issue of human overpopulation.
In 1997, the American grassroots organisation Population Connection, then known as Zero Population Growth (ZPG), honoured Jane Fonda and her then-husband, CNN founder Ted Turner, with a gala in New York City. Both were active within the ZPG movement and Fonda in particular has been candid over the years about the dangers of human population growth.
In a 2011 blog post on her website titled ‘Too Many People’, she wrote about her fear for the future in light of population growth projections:
“There’s lots to worry about these days but you know what worries me most: the news I read day before yesterday that by something like 2045 there will be 10 billion people on the planet – or more! This is profoundly bad news. There are already millions and millions of people that are starving in the world and even more without drinkable water. There simply won’t be enough of the things that human beings need to survive – much less thrive – not enough food, water, jobs, space. Then there’s the issue of our souls – what will the world be like when there’s no more wilderness, or wild animals or marine life because one species of animal – homo sapiens – has taken up all the space and resources?
“I am in New York City as I write this. I lived here in the 1950s when there were a little over 2 billion people in the world. My children (never mind my grandchildren) will never know what a city like New York was like with 5 billion fewer people in the world. Even now, with 7 billion people, it is hard to walk down Broadway or Fifth Avenue because of the almost solid mass of bodies jostling to find a space to walk through.
“I’m scared. I’ll be gone but I am scared for my grandchildren and for the wild animals and for the whole human race.”
In October 2019, Jane Fonda created ‘Fire Drill Fridays’ after being inspired by the words and work of climate activist Greta Thunburg.
Vowing to fight for the climate herself, Fonda organised and led weekly protests every Friday on Capitol Hill, demanding that political leaders take action to address the climate emergency the world is facing. In an interview with Marianne Schnall around that time, Fonda spoke about the relationship between population growth and pandemics:
“I’m no expert, but I read the science. They’re telling us the further the climate crisis is allowed to continue, the more there are going to be pandemics. Why? Well, one thing is there are pathogens in the ice sheets in the Arctic and Greenland, that when those ice sheets melt, those pathogens are released and humankind has never been exposed to them. We have zero resistance to them and we don’t even know what they are. This current COVID-19 crisis, why did that happen? Because of expanding population and poverty and deforestation.
“Humans are going into parts of the wild lands and forests that we aren’t supposed to be in and that we were never in before, chopping down trees. Animals are coming out of the forest that we don’t usually have much contact with. And when people are poor, they kill the animals and eat them and sell them. And so these animals that carry viruses – they’re called vectors – are being put into marketplaces. It’s not just COVID-19; it’s how AIDS came, it’s how SARS came, it’s how MERS came. It’s how humans interrelate with their environment, make us vulnerable to pathogens that we have no resistance to. And because of air traffic and how much we move around, they become pandemics very quickly.”
Jane Fonda is an American actress, activist and environmentalist. She is regarded as one of the world’s most influential and inspiring women.
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An amazing lady who has never backed away from a cause. Shameful that despite what is going on all around us our politicians and stupid leaders (Trump) are doing almost nothing to mitigate climate change… “Drill di..head drill”.
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An incredible lady. So much passion for the environment and women’s rights, she just keeps going. Love her comments about overpopulation, about the things we are losing and will never see again.
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Great words. It’s hard to imagine a world with no open space or creatures in the sea but it’s a future that isn’t far away. Why do people still have such large families. One child per couple in every country has to be enough and may even help to reduce the population in time.
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