Are Infertility Deniers the New Climate Change Deniers?
Scientists have been warning the public about dropping birth rates for decades. So why isn’t anyone listening?
In a maternity ward in Nicosia, Italy, tiny beds with starched white sheets are arranged in a single file. The beep-beep of heart rate monitors echoes down the hall. A nurse sits in the corner reading a book, occasionally glancing at her watch. She has nothing to do.
She has nothing to do because the beds are empty. There are no babies.
If you are an exhausted American parent, you probably are not too worried about well-rested childless people in other parts of the world. But demographers are worried. They have sounded the alarm for over a decade, and their warning is dire.
The US has entered an infertility crisis that may be too late to reverse.
It’s a different narrative from the one that many of us have been fed. Since the 1960s, we have been taught that population growth, not decline, is the real problem. There are far too many people on the planet. Babies not being born? One less human to waste valuable resources. Or so the Malthusian story goes.
But it’s not overall population growth or decline that should alarm people. It’s where we…
