December 5, 2014
An international campaign aims to engage the public and protect the environment, and at the heart of the effort is the book Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot (OVER). The campaign just announced that drawings will be held each month for campaign participants to receive free copies of this unusual book.
OVER, which weighs in at more than seven pounds and contains more than 300 pages of provocative exhibit-format photography, retails for $50 US. Giving away free books on a monthly basis isn’t completely unique to the campaign, as the organizers of Global Population Speak Out (Speak Out) are actually granting over 4,000 free copies of OVER to people and organizations around the world in early 2015. The purpose of these 4,000 book grants is to crowd-source creative ideas on how to deploy the books as international agents of change. The campaign organizers are hoping for sensationalized and dramatic delivery to policymakers, opinion leaders, activists, allied organizations, and other audiences.
The free monthly give-away, on the other hand, is simply a way to say thank you to people who appreciate the beauty, artistry and important conservation messages found in OVER. The winner of the monthly give-away doesn’t need to apply or promise to do anything with the book: the recipient can keep the book or do whatever he or she wants with it.
For the larger effort of distributing 4,000 copies of OVER, Speak Out is recruiting
: ambassadors of information and inspiration, who propose unique and creative actions with the books, to help raise public awareness of ecological and social challenges around the world – and to promote human population stabilization as one part of a more sustainable future.Names for the monthly drawings will be pulled from Speak Out’s
.The campaign map shows Campaign Friends (people who have put their name on the map in support of Speak Out), Campaign Activists (people who have pledged to help spread the word), and Book Champions (people who have requested free books to distribute). Join us! Put your name on the map!
Campaign Friends Campaign Activists Book Champions"Over-Over-Over features a refreshingly spare text. There’s an introduction by the guiding founder of the Population Media Center, William Ryerson; a foreword by Musimbi Kanyoro, a veteran defender of family planning as a fundamental human right; and closing comments from Eileen Crist, an advocate for the myriad other species that our own overwhelming presence threatens to push off the planet. You should read their intelligent remarks, because it’s well worth the time – even though you’ll be tempted to go right to the pictures. And understandably so: The real star of this book is the photography."
There are thousands of essays, articles and books dealing with population but “Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot” provides a convincing new way of understanding the impacts of population size on human welfare and nature. Through well-chosen quotes, and stunning photographs, this largely visual presentation documents the realities and role of burgeoning human numbers on a broad variety of important areas including the destruction of wildlife and natural systems, air and water pollution, food insecurity and climate change.
A stunningly beautiful book, Over Over Over calls to mind the films of Godfrey Reggio, who some critics called to account for making the ugly—exploding napalm consuming whole villages—look visually compelling. Despite the beautiful images of often ugly things—degraded or devastated land and seascapes, wholesale slaughter of non-human creatures, human crowding and poverty—there is no getting lost and forgetting what is before us: the injury we have wrought as a species to others, the Earth and ourselves.
There are many ways to participate! Together, we can raise awareness and bring about change.