Far-right hatemongers like Elon Musk and Matt Walsh are sounding alarms about a "fertility crisis." Musk claims that "population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming."
But the data tells a different story. As reported by Samuel Miller McDonald in Current Affairs, the human population is still growing, with about 132 million births annually — adding 180,000 people to the global total each day. From 6.1 billion in 2000 to over 8.2 billion today, the expansion continues, making claims of imminent extinction disconnected from reality.
McDonald argues that sinister ideological motives — nationalism, classism, and racism — drive the panic. Musk's endorsement of the "Great Replacement" theory and Walsh's dismissal of financial concerns for prospective parents is propaganda to maintain a system reliant on abundant labor. As McDonald says, "oligarchs are desperate to maintain an army of slaves and soldiers — slaves to serve them, soldiers to protect them from threats internal and external."
Previously:
• Which apocalyptic threats are most likely to wipe out Earth's population?
