Distributed for Prickly Paradigm Press
How Do We Think About Population in the Anthropocene?
How do we think about population in the Anthropocene?
The “Great Acceleration” describes a set of interrelated human-driven transformations of the Anthropocene, including the eightfold population growth since 1800. Yet ideas about population sit uncomfortably in contemporary discussions about our current historical moment.
How Do We Think About Population in the Anthropocene? brings together the world’s key thinkers in Anthropocene studies from a wide range of disciplines, including geology, geography, demography, history, political theory, and more, to think critically about the most important variable: population. How do we think about population in the Anthropocene, or should we even think in terms of population at all? The twelve short essays in this pamphlet offer responses that reimagine how we think about economy, environment, and extinction.
4.5 x 7 | © 2026
History: Environmental History
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
Political Science: Political and Social Theory
Table of Contents
Alison Bashford, Duncan Kelly, and David Nally
1. Why is it so Hard to Talk About Population? A Personal Story
Naomi Oreskes
2. The Conjunction of Human Population Growth and the Technosphere in the Anthropocene
Jan Zalasiewicz and Julia Adeney Thomas
3. How Do Environmental Historians Think About Population in the Anthropocene?
John McNeill
4. How Not to Think About Population in the Anthropocene
Matthew Connelly
5. Is Reproductive Justice Compatible with Efforts to Slow Population Growth?
Meehan Crist
6. Population Growth in the Anthropocene from a Degrowth and Global Justice Perspective
Matthias Schmelzer
7. Carnivorous Capitalism: Livestock Animals as “Population”
David Nally
8. Three Anthropocene Generations: From Population Growth to Fertility Decline
Alison Bashford
9. Aging in the Anthropocene: The Limits of Adjustment and Adaptation in Asia
Kavita Sivaramakrishnan
10. Reproductive Justice and Eugenics in the Anthropocene
R. Sánchez-Rivera
11. A Broken Mirror for Princes? (What if) Population is the Anthropocene?
Duncan Kelly
List of Figures and Tables
Contributors
Acknowledgements
References