“Why is this in late stage capitalism?” Besides the pants-shittingly dystopian news, the article points out that some factors include things like environmental issues and obesity, and guess which economic system is largely to blame for those things?
You know what’s scary? Not the declining birth rate. What’s scary is malthusian fascism coming out of it.
As a lesbian, people saying birth rates must increase scares the shit out of me. It legitimises homophobia including conversion therapy and corrective rape.
Aniway this article is bullshit. No class analysis. Just fear mongering about if ‘births per women’ drop too low. Don’t worry about the birth rate, worry about the living.
I remember when anti-Malthusians started sharing info about birth rates, and the map showed the poorest countries especially sub-saharan africa as having like ten times higher birthrates, and all the smarty pants know it alls just glossing over that fact, made me laugh. Like “haha guys, you know we can’t show these maps to the general public right? Without all the orange faced hitlers shitting themselves right?.. right!?” like you guys get that that you can’t show maps like this without including all the weird reasons why it doesn’t matter like life expectancy being under 30 in these places, or else ya know you could trigger a whole new wave of neonazi propaganda, where rather than talking about how Malthusianism is a genocidal superstition only used to justify ethnic cleansing, and instead they’re just gonna go “holy fuck black and brown have ten times as many babies as whites, there’s not gonna be anymore white people, oh no we have to… ummm go beat up a jewish kid” or whatever they do. Meanwhile me naively thinking all the Smarty Mcsmartpants at the anti-Malthusianism symposium would realize the global birth rate map is more of a, ya know, for the adults who already know what theyre talking about, to look at section of a new textbook, not plastered all over the fucking internet in meme form and the main focal point of the argument, and then as I’m saying all of this Christchurch happened…
This may not be a bad thing at first since overpopulation and overconsumption are huge barriers to building sustainable societies.
yeah umm not cool
Why does this scare you?
Capitalism artificially causing human birth rates to drop is pretty scary tbh
Well it says that:
Between 1973 to 2018, the concentration of sperm in men not known to be infertile fell by more than 51%, from 101.2 million to 49 million sperm per millimetre of semen, the new study found.
If someone were paranoid it would seem pretty doomer. At worst you would expect birthrates to be halved over these years. But this is far from the case. Birth rates are still a factor of development and living conditions rather than any biological bottleneck.
The study, led by Israeli epidemiologist Hagai Levine, updates 2017 research which had come under scrutiny for only including North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
This is just great replacement theory in the garb of a scientific article.
Since the news website really wanted me to credit them:
Please credit and share this article with others using this link:https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/2438659/sperm-count-is-declining-at-accelerating-rate-worldwide-study. View our policies at http://goo.gl/9HgTd and http://goo.gl/ou6Ip. © Bangkok Post PCL. All rights reserved.
Meanwhile the author:
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He is currently a fellow of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.
He is hardly an expert in this field. You shouldn’t take points like this from cranks.
If someone were paranoid it would seem pretty doomer. At worst you would expect birthrates to be halved over these years. But this is far from the case
Once sperm counts are above 40-50 million/ml, more doesn’t necessarily mean a higher chance of conception. However, once you drop below that amount, the probability of conception starts dropping off rapidly as sperm counts fall. The implications of this being that there shouldn’t be any noticeable trends in birthrate tied to sperm counts for now. Since the concentration is falling at an accelerated pace, this may soon have a noticeable impact on society.
There has been some research into potential causes, and I personally believe that it’s due to “endocrine disrupters” such as phthalates, PCBs, PFAS, BPA, BPS, and others. Since humans stand at the top of the food pyramid, all of these chemicals are accumulating within us. I don’t think there’s any escaping this; this is likely one of the possible Great Filters.
Once sperm counts are above 40-50 million/ml, more doesn’t necessarily mean a higher chance of conception.
This seems to be true from two research papers I skimmed through.
Oof, that’s fair, I didn’t read beyond the headline tbh 😵💫
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Real Children of Men hours. Lol
Damn, humanity’s getting hit with the Krogan Genophage from Mass Effect
