I had a biological mother, but I've never met her, I'm an adoptee. I was two months old when I was adopted, so my mom is my mom. Nowadays, some people can watch video of themselves being born; not sure if that wouldn't creep me out a bit. Some things should be left in the realm of the mysterious.In the early days of the environmental movement, a key plank in the platform was ZPG, or zero population growth. As I've said on my blog,the Hazard Hot Sheet, we wouldn't have the enviro problems that we do if there weren't just too damn many of us. We're depleting aquifers, energy sources, the soil's capacity to feed us, you name it. The so-called Green Revolution was going to feed everybody (yeah, right)…that's when we had only about half the everybodies we have today.Barry Commoner's book, "The Closing Circle," Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb," and Andrew Goudie's "The Human Impact" pointed out that we don't have an infinite carrying capacity, and the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" report, and its two sequels, fleshed it out. Politicians of a different stripe from mine decry and condemn that attitude as negative, and that it's all about economic growth, growth, growth. But, dammit, there are only so many resources to exploit. I know some fatalistic conservatives who figure that humans won't be around much longer, so let's just use up everything we can while we can. That's not my approach, obviously.The nice thing about "Mother" is that it ties in all the old ZPG ideas with the current women's issues and reproductive health ones. AND drags Ehrlich out of mothballs, lol. I wish I had a teaching gig at Stanford. My brother-in-law does.I have no kids, that I'm aware of, anyway, so my impact is low. Chairman Mao tried to impose limits on China's population, with mixed results. (I'm working on a blog post on the pros and cons of Chinese medicine…I'm a fan of the culture, but some of their "remedies" are way toxic, and wiping out endangered species to make "aphrodisiacs" for an overpopulated country isn't a plan I'd write.) What I liked about the film is the message, and how viscerally it was delivered, through fine cinematography and narration. It's visually and aurally arresting, and I think anyone who sees it will GET the message. Great job by all involved.Gaia = Mom.

This film is so refreshing because it highlights a very important issue that is not talked about enough.Population growth is a seismic driver of so much poverty for individual women and their families, so much civil unrest (16 of top 20 failed states have a fertility rate over 4) and so much environmental degradation. And yet it has been hushed and does not appear in our daily news.Mother is a very engaging film that pulled me in on an emotional and intellectual basis.And, like good documentaries do, gave me the motivation to make a greater difference on this issue.Being sure that every one of the 200+ million women that want family planning and do not have access get the access they need is the least we can do.

Mother: Caring for 7 Billion is a thoughtful, engaging documentary about the ever increasing consequences of rapid population growth. Through the use of expert interviews, as well as human stories, the film powerfully advocates for access to comprehensive family planning and education for girls and women as the antidote to explosive population growth, which contributes to environmental degradation, maternal and child mortality, and the cycle of poverty facing many in the developing world. It also draws attention to vast over-consumption and a focus on growth, in which some countries, like the United States, account for a relatively small proportion of the global population, but a large proportion of global resource consumption.Mother is factual, and grounded in a thoughtful theoretical framework; it also tells a story that is powerful and emotional, and that highlights that these issues have real world and real life implications.

This film examines world population that has grown much too fast in recent years; it adequately warns us of the very serious impacts that will result from this growth; and unwinds the mystery of the population taboo that has kept the subject under wraps for a least a couple of decades.The film interviews some of the early population activists and shows how the opinion of these activists has changed, in the 40 years - since the first Earth Day in 1970 - from the idea of 'population control' to a more gentle but effective solution: women's empowerment, voluntary family planning, and women's control over their reproductive function.The film gives a powerful message that says, when women are informed about the freedom of choice that is given by modern birth control, they usually choose to have smaller families - if they have access to birth control - for the health and well-being of all family members. It tells us that 'population control' is not at all necessary, and leaves us with the idea that the population taboo, if everyone watches this film, will be lifted.