The case for smartphones as a contributor to falling birth rates
Among economic stress, affordability, and climate change dread, is smartphone use another factor in the downward trend in fertility rates?
Population
The UN’s ‘Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty’ cannot survive reality
In the circumstances, humane, socially just Roadmaps that show the world community theoretical alternatives, however brilliantly conceived, are destined merely to reveal inviting roads that cannot be taken.
Why pronatalism won’t reverse birth-rate decline
Slower growth — and ultimately zero growth — is good for people and the planet, but not for those in power, who for millennia relied on women’s reproductive labor to produce more workers, consumers, and taxpayers. Today’s Trump-era and even progressive pronatalist policies try to reverse the trend, but there’s a reason why they won’t work.
‘Progressive pronatalism’ is an oxymoron: How arguments buying into the low-fertility panic fail women
As concern over falling birth rates spreads across the political spectrum, pronatalist ideas are finding new audiences. But protecting reproductive freedom and respecting planetary limits require rejecting the politics of population growth.
Iran is running out of water. The problem goes far beyond policy failure
From collapsing rivers to groundwater depletion, Iran’s water crisis is often framed as a failure of governance or infrastructure. But it reflects a broader reality: water stress is emerging wherever human demand pushes beyond ecological limits.
For the Love of Our Children: a poem by Esther Phillips
Environmental activist and poet Esther Phillips reflects on grief and anti-natalism in this poem, which explores the choice not to have children as an act of love in an age of collapse.
The most appropriate response to falling birthrates? Embrace them
As governments push costly pronatalist schemes to boost birthrates, the real solution, argues Nandita Bajaj, is to embrace declining fertility, expand women’s reproductive agency, and redesign economies for equity and ecological survival.
Nandita Bajaj: Confronting patriarchy, pronatalism, and population denial
Nandita Bajaj, executive director of Population Balance, defies stereotypes. She chose not to have children and has dedicated her life to research and advocacy on how pronatalism, overpopulation, and human supremacy fuel social inequality and ecological overshoot, and to confronting tough questions about humanity’s outsized footprint on Earth.
Falling human fertility can’t be reversed by cheerleading for motherhood
Concern about a surprise acceleration in the decline of human fertility is missing the most critical factor.
Your order, please?
What if we presented possible options for future human developments—let’s say human population as a solid example—and pretend it’s a menu from which we get to choose.
Envisioning a livable future
Most big-think essays like this end on a note of inspiration and hope. For once, I’ll resist the temptation to go that route. Can we humans make ourselves useful to the rest of life? It’s an open question.
Are we missing something about the coming population decline?
As predictions about world population decline proliferate, the causes almost never include the toxic chemicals that are dramatically undermining human fertility worldwide.
