Jenny Goldie

Newsletter Editor

Jenny grew up in Sydney. While studying Science at Sydney University, she was influenced by Professor of Zoology, Charles Birch, who stressed that human population growth was a problem for the environment. After a year each teaching science in Papua New Guinea, NSW and Japan, she spent two years in Connecticut, USA, where she read Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” and joined Zero Population Growth. She and her then husband duly adopted or foster their remaining children, all of non-white background. Back in Sydney, while a full-time mother, she was heavily involved in Aboriginal issues and education, including the Disadvantaged Schools Program. In the 1980s, she was active in the Australian Democrats, standing several times as candidate, working as Parliamentary staffer and in the party organisation. After moving to Canberra with her current husband she co-founded Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population (AESP) in 1988. AESP was later renamed Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) for which she has held positions of national president, national director and newsletter editor as well as running successful conferences including the Fenner Conferences on Environment in 2013 and 2022. Along the way she obtained a Master of Arts (Journalism) and worked as a science communicator for CSIRO Entomology. She now lives in Cooma NSW and is also involved in Climate Action Monaro (which she founded in 2011), Landcare, the local art gallery, the Uniting Church and the Greens.