Wake up to threat of falling fertility

Wake up to threat of falling fertility

The global population of the human species in 1965 was 3.3 billion. Today the estimate is 7.85bn.

The current consensus projection appears to be 9.7bn by 2050 though this could turn out to be an over-estimate as human fertility rates are in decline. Indeed, they are plummeting.

Writing in a new book, Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist and professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, warns that the impending fertility crisis poses a global threat comparable to the climate crisis.

“The current state of reproductive affairs can't continue much longer without threatening human survival,” she warns in Count Down.

The dire forecast stems from research findings published in 2017 and indicating that sperm counts in the West had plummeted by 59% between 1973 and 2011.

The latest research points to sperm counts hitting zero in 2045, thereafter precipitating a massive population collapse measured in only decades.

That is five years before the bulk of the international community appears pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, thus rendering the ambition a pyrrhic victory.

In the book, Swan and co-author Stacey Colino examine how modern life is to blame for what amounts to a sterility tsunami.

It especially sounds alarm bells regarding lifestyle and