how oligarchs are polluting our way out of a baby boom
When children and future generations are critical to the future, but not as critical as quarterly returns.
The world's oligarchs need four things from you. The first is to devote all your waking hours making them wealthier. The second is to breed. The third is to keep breeding fast enough to grow the economy at a rate faster than the interest on their loans, so they don't have to sell stock and trigger taxable events. And the fourth is to keep breeding until you colonize the solar system. Seems simple enough, right? So, why aren't you doing it?
Well, let's see. Cost of living is out of control, there is diminishing childcare and less parental support, education is more and more expensive, and the public faces cut after cut in support for all the services needed to properly support the future generations we should be producing. Meanwhile, by contrast, the wealth of the global 0.1% is growing at an astronomical rate as they pressure governments for more tax cuts, less regulation, and draconian cuts to public services.
At the same time, one look at our screens on devices built by companies they own, with a scroll through a timeline on media apps they also control, fills our eyes and minds with doom, gloom, panic, hate, and conspiracy theories, which they pay professional trolls and liars around the world to spread so we spend more time on their platforms and see more ads. Not exactly the kind of mood setting for date night, is it?
"Hey honey, I know the world is on fire and every time we open the news apps, it's just a parade of stupidity, greed, bad faith, and lies, and no one is doing anything to fix it, but let's have some kids! Come on, just lay back and think of the shareholders! Could you imagine living in a world where they have to sell their stocks instead of just borrowing against them forever?!"
But even for those who aren't worried about cost, or the future, or feel like they can make it work against all odds because we always have so far, there's a major spike in infertility to contend with as more and more organisms on Earth – not just humans – are struggling to make more of themselves for a bizarre mystery reason we've known about for over 50 years but cannot tackle because it will make a bunch of billionaires very upset.
That something are the thousands of synthetic chemicals derived from fossil fuels and hydrocarbons we know disrupt hormonal regulation and impact fertility and sperm production, and unleashed on the world with barely a thought over the past 120 years or so. Trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of factories rely on these chemicals being widely produced, loosely regulated, and freely shipped around the world to keep costs down.
Scientists studying fertility in both humans and wildlife flagged over a thousand noxious chemicals that may play a role in major global population and fertility decline, and think there may thousands more that merit further research. They also note that we knew this could happen since the early 1970s and decided to do nothing about it to protect the stock market and shareholder dividends because doing the right thing is expensive and has a very low ROI for the non-plebes.
Meanwhile the second Trump administration is busy defanging the EPA to let Big Fossil pollute at their leisure, and limiting the rights of those affected by toxic chemicals to sue for compensation and remediation. Even if we wanted to clean up the world, the task is already monumental with plastics alone, and we're actively going backwards, making it easier to pollute and refuse to clean up the mess because, again, doing the right thing is for the poors.
If you truly want massive population growth to make more consumers and avoid taxation, why would you do everything your power to make it more difficult? These oligarchs should be plowing billions into housing, education, childcare, and rush to clean up the planet and make our future more sustainable. It would make humans more fertile and feel like having kids is much easier and more manageable. You'd have a baby boom of epic proportions.
But the problem is that extreme wealth is a pathology, literally. These are people who do not grasp the very concept of enough. They cannot share or invest in things that do not net them a direct profit or increase in net worth for the same reason a hoarder cannot bring themselves to throw anything away. Hell, they would rather die in luxury bunkers by the hands of their guards than pay 2% more tax. The very concept of wealth is more important to them than making sane decisions about self-preservation.
And so, our oligarchs will demand we breed like rabbits on MDMA while doing literally everything in their power to not just make it as difficult as possible for all of us, but to keep making the situation worse and worse with every passing day because their minds are broken by greed.
See: Brander, S.M., Swan, S.H., Mehinto, A.C. et al. (2026) Impacts of environmental stressors on fertility and fecundity across taxa, with implications for planetary health. npj Emerg. Contam. 2, 12 DOI: 10.1038/s44454-026-00032-6
