To that bullshit at least on the left. It used to depress me that so many even on the left perpetuate that noxious and delusional narrative:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/there-are-many-threats-to-humanity.-a-low-birth-rate-isnt-one-of-them
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/01/progressive-pronatalism-is-an-oxymoron-how-arguments-buying-into-the-low-fertility-panic-fail-women/
Nandita Bajaj of Population Balance, Christopher Ketcham, Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs etc are people on the left who are embracing animal rights and the environment and in very sane and universal ways.
A lot of damage was done by a very vocal type (e.g. Betsy Hartmann, George Monbiot) who attacked anyone making the obvious point that permanent growth on a finite planet is insane as “ecofascist” (a term I loathe).
Cornucopian economists attacked sane stuff like the Limits to Growth and this totally bogus astroturf type made it out to be racist or sexist to point the obvious out (ironically make things overall more racist and sexist..growing population numbers hits the worse off people most, making it such a noxious lie that addressing population explosion is inherently coercive. That’s one of the worst lies of the past and no one who perpetuated it should have any credibility going forward).
Platitudes and social media posts ignore the the reality of how resource strain actually works except for bullshit jobs or shit jobs rapaciously mining the planet to the maximum.
It’s like the right wing argument that child labor is actually a type of economic growth.
Population explosion leads to the worst type of job growth and strains the planet and societies to breaking point.
Besides if food has scaled with the green revolution it is obvious that education and healthcare haven’t and can’t. Humans are a complex species and require resources beyond food.
Rising extremism I would be willing to wager is correlated with population explosion and the societal stress that accompanies it.
People fighting over the same strained resource pool are essentially almost directed by industrialists (via social media) and cynical politicians to get into polarized conflicts.
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