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The always-great Kaiser Bauch has a new article, this time on the (dis-)similarities between climate change and the fertility crisis. It's good and there's a lot to agree with, in particular the general gist: None of us will probably be able to do anything about either of those, and all we can do is adapt. Both are global issues that arise from the peculiarities of current-tech, current-culture modern societies, and may vanish or switch in another direction altogether with further increased tech levels or changed culture. Neither is likely to be an extinction-level problem. Both are politically polarized, with one side leaning towards doomerism and/or instrumentalisation, and the other towards denial and/or indifference.
Nevertheless, the article somewhat overstates its thesis, and furthermore I find it interesting to think about how and why the differences exist & are the way they are, as well as some related recent developments & discussions.
So, let's start with some of the most obvious differences. Climate change is a truly global problem in the sense that it's literally impossible to fix locally. This is the reason why the EU/german-style Energiewende is so insanely myopic and short-sighted; Even if it worked relatively fine on its own merits (i.e. reducing emissions to near-zero with minimal damage to the economy) AND if everyone on the entire globe did the same, it still requires adaptions to the already-changed climate. Instead it not only is sold as an alternative to adaption, the rest of the world isn't doing the same anyway, and of course it isn't working well on its own merits, either.
See the AC discourse: I actually think myself that the weather is still tolerable enough that ACs make sense mostly for clinics and for the elderly, we don't even need general adoption. But no, instead EU media is putting out very general anti-AC messaging that we can't have nice things since it costs energy, and energy causes climate change. There was a notable incident where the EU Commission HQ shut down its AC - but only for the lower, peasant floors. Imo it could easily go into a Parks & Rec parody episode, if P&R was capable of looking in that particular direction. All a microcosm of the dysfunctions of the contemporary EU.
Likewise, the instrumentalisation of climate change usually takes a very specific form: Due to its very nature requiring communal solutions, it's easy to combine with general-purpose communitarian ideologies like communism, social justice or "mere" socialism. The "watermelon" (green on the outside, red on the inside) accusation strikes one as very adapt if you just skim through, for example, the Green New Deal wiki page, despite its very pro-slant. Take a look at the "Environmental justice" subsection. But honestly, it's already enough to talk with the average green voter to notice the commonalities. This also directly explains rightwing dismissal: If the most prominent green initiatives blatantly risk torpedoing the entire enterprise by tying it together with completely unrelated, highly contentious far-left pet projects, what does it tell you about how serious its proponents are on the original topic? Nothing good.
So in short, I'd characterize the climate change movement: We pour significant resources into fighting climate change, but in a way and direction that does not and can not fix it. Powerful groups can and do profit from this free money, however.
Let's now look at the fertility crisis. First, I want to to note that it is a fundamentally local problem, in the sense that any given society with a healthy TFR can just simply ignore global fertility dysfunctions (insert Tyler the creator cyberbullying meme, except it's about the fertility crisis and just having kids). It's global only in the sense that it seems to happen everywhere, merely on different timelines. That means that, irrespective of the details of any possible solution it is at least in principle solvable by any given nation state.
Let's now look at the nature of the problem. There's a few candidates: The rise of solitary entertainment (related to the "It's the phones, stupid") thesis, the opportunity cost thesis, or the loss of religion thesis, and a whole bunch of others. I won't go into detail on which I find the most likely, strongest factor, but it's hard not to notice that they are all fundamentally cultural and, in fact, down to personal choices. You actually can simply choose to forego solitary entertainment and spend more time with family & friends. You can just stay religious. You can just avoid education and choose a job that is easy to combine with a family. As the kids say (well, if you have them), you can just DO things.
This now makes the shape of the instrumentalisation obvious: Conservatives and rightwingers more generally have always looked at cultural change through the lens of moral decline, and in the case of the fertility crisis, this lens is actually matching pretty well. It fits even better if you search for contrafactuals: As Lyman Stone points out, conservatives have very broadly more kids than moderates, which have more than liberals. This becomes even more striking if you look at the highest fertility groups, which is basically identical with a list of known religious ultraconservative groups.
So the right tries to instrumentalize the fertility crisis to push for whatever part of these conservative cultures is their personal hobbyhorse, be it female disempowerment, increased marriage rates, or clamping down on modern sex & dating norms, without bothering to look too closely on whether the shoe really fits that well. Which also readily explains leftwing dismissals: It's easy to find stats for any of those issues, showing that each, at least in isolation, does not really fix anything. And if that is the case, and the guy arguing in favor is blatantly doing the same for just about any issue, what does it tell you about them? Again, nothing good.
Nevertheless though, it seems obvious to me that we are failing on fertility for the simple reason that we are hardly even trying. A single look into the lifestyle of the ultrafertile makes it clear that all the personal reasons seculars usually give are basically bullshit as well. The ultrafertile earn less, give more to charity and on top have more kids anyway. And their kids aren't, objectively, doing badly, either. Nor am I compelled by the pronatalists to do anything in any way, at least so far. The instrumentalisation, as it exists, is mostly secluded to online anon accounts or conservative sermons in church. Unlike climate change laws, I can easily ignore them.
All of this is so silly to me. The answer is women's education reduces women's fertility, and there's no real way around this problem. Women, when given the choice, do not choose children, and so by allowing them to support themselves and choose whether to have kids, they choose not to.
Everywhere education of women has increased has seen a precipitous drop in fertility. Women's education is genocide:
Have we tried every possible way around it?
I can't recall precisely where I read it (I think it might have been on the Artist Formerly Known As Twitter?), but someone suggested that, if the educational environment were more accommodating of studentesses with babies, women would be less likely to postpone or forego reproduction for the sake of their education, and other women, upon seeing a classmate or three carrying a baby in her arms, might activate the wiring inside her that makes her want a baby of her own. (Cf. the attempts to deter teenage pregnancies by issuing realistic infant dolls to girls in secondary school, which had the exact opposite effect.)
(Also, even if one ignores the cost to women, increasing fertility by steering women away from education would still not be an un-alloyed victory, as the children thus produced would be growing up with less knowledgeable mothers.)
One, the education of women was not intended to prevent births; two, the people promoting women's education typically promote it for women of all ethnic backgrounds; three, the usual examples of genocide-by-preventing-births involve stopping women of the targeted group who wish to reproduce from doing so.
No, I don't think we have tried all the possible ways around it, but having identified the main problem, perhaps we could simply address the problem instead of trying out one farfetched kludge after another.
OK, but what about the men who are denied admission to those programs, and therefore are less able to provide for a wife and child? What, in other words, about the male doctors who never were, who were denied so females could go to medical school and quit working by 35?
The stated goal of many of these programs, and the way they measure success, is by reducing fertility. This is a holdover of the overpopulation, population bomb, thinking that was coincident with the push to promote women's equality worldwide.
Keeping women from being educated, even if it solves the problem of declining fertility, introduces two new problems:
I. A mother whose husband becomes abusive to her or her children will, if she has been denied education, be less able to provide for herself and her children without her husband's coöperation; this makes it much harder to stop domestic abuse.
II. A mother without a solid understanding of the world will be much more vulnerable to claims of "Your children are in grave danger from everything I don't like!" or "My magic beans will guarantee that your children enjoy perfect health!"
(At two he knew/the Bible through,/An infant prodigy;/His parents cried,/'Our joy and pride/we've raised on Q. R. V.' --Edward Gorey, The Universal Solvent)
Thus, if we are concerned about falling fertility rates, it would behoove us to figure out how to make women's education not reduce women's fertility.
The state already pays for this or it gets the ex-husband to pay?
Does education even help here? Are women, or men for that matter, taught about what supplements might or might not have any benefit? Does the teaching sink in? Are the teachings actually correct? Everyone was taught a lot of nonsense about the food pyramid, saturated fat vs sugar vs whatever...
Some people are just stupid/unwise that can't be changed. Send a stupid, unwise person to school and they'll come out just as they went in.
Basic financial competence is not taught, nor is it required even for teaching or providing information to others. I know it's just an anecdote but apparently nobody thought that this woman is unsuitable for giving financial advice even after coming to worldwide prominence for spectacular financial incompetence. It's systemic, like how educators decide to teach their students badly (re phonics) because it's a fashionable fun fad in the education world.
Education can teach skills like engineering or mathematics but it doesn't seem to teach anything like these general life heuristics you're gesturing at. You'd think people would learn about compound interest and credit cards, the concept is pretty simple... But they don't!
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