If Honeybees Were Vanishing as Quickly as Human Babies, the World Would Be Panicking
Remember all those apocalyptic news stories about “colony collapse” among honeybees? For a decade at least, I remember seeing articles appearing all across various media about the mysterious, sudden decline in the number of honeybees. We were given shocking statistics, regaled with sad anecdotes from puzzled beekeepers, and warned of the grave consequences for the human food supply if the creatures that pollinate plants were actually to go extinct. We also heard countless theories about what might be causing this sudden collapse in the population of bees, with culprits ranging from parasites to side-effects from pesticides.
I don’t know how that story turned out. I still see bees and still eat food, and the stories have mostly vanished. So either the problem solved itself, or else it was actually hyped and exaggerated to advance the agenda of some group with lots of clout in the media. That group either gave up, got what it wanted, or picked some other tactic to achieve its ends.
The reason I bring that all up is this: That same kind of collapse is actually happening now, except not to insects on whom human beings depend, but among human beings themselves. Country after country across the world is experiencing the kind of “colony collapse” that, had it happened to bees, would have provoked a film by David Attenborough, a speaking tour for Al Gore, and endless committees in Congress looking for legislative solutions.
The Pandemic in the Cradle
But all we hear is … crickets, apart from a few lonely onlookers like Elon Musk, and some pro-family activist Christians. Just look at the chart below, about the most recent year for which we have statistics:
This sudden drop in the birthrate is just the latest piece of grim news, coming as it does on top of catastrophic long-term trends that have been accelerating for decades. The U.S. birth rate sits at its lowest in a century.
Last year (2023) 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S., which now has a total population of 335 million people. In 1947, there were 200,000 more babies born, to just 143 million people. That means we went from 26.6 babies per 1,000 people to just 10.7 babies per 1,000 people. That’s a staggering 60% drop in the birthrate in just one lifetime.
If the economy had shrunk like that, we wouldn’t be chatting about a “recession,” but shrieking about a new Great Depression. We face a future dominated by newcomers from poor countries with no traditions of liberty, welcomed by a Left that wants to sign them up for perpetual welfare. Or else something even worse, as Japan is experiencing: Last year, Japan had more than twice as many deaths (1,590,000) as births (just 727,000). The country is aging and depopulating fast. Sales of adult diapers surpassed sales of baby diapers in 2023. The result? A stagnant economy, weighed down by people on pensions starting to outnumber those out producing. What happens when it’s not five or even three young people working for everyone in a nursing home, but two? Or only one? The lack of youth in Asia spells “e-u-t-h-a-n-a-s-i-a.”
Why We Gave Up on the Species
Certainly, economic collapse is a very bad thing — but why do we say that? Because of its impact on human lives. So when billions of people decide that human life itself isn’t worth living, or at least passing on, why aren’t we even worried? Why aren’t blue-ribbon commissions, Congressional committees, and the PhDs at hundreds of research universities working around the clock to find out what’s happening and how to fix it?
Maybe all that “population explosion” propaganda that was pumped into our heads for the past few decades went much too far, and its fantasy scenarios of global hunger and mass extinctions poisoned too many potential parents’ minds and wombs. The birth control explosion and Sexual Revolution really managed to sever the inborn biological links between sex, reproduction, and family — as if we weren’t mammals but some kind of pleasure machine produced by eggs left in the sand.
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Doubtless, other factors also play a part. The experimental, abortion-derived COVID vaccine that was forced on billions of people by their pastors and politicians seems to have caused many thousands of miscarriages, and its impact on long-term fertility and health remains unknown. That’s because instead of testing it in labs, our elites decided to test in real time on the entire human population. (That’s called “listening to the science,” by the way.)
The only subcultures with high birth rates around the world are those dominated by deeply religious people — and not because all of them condemn artificial contraception, since most of them don’t. They do believe that human life is good, that sex belongs in marriage, and that child-rearing is a sacred privilege and duty — not a lifestyle option or even worse, a crime against “the climate.”
China Hardest Hit, But Don’t Gloat
The escalating collapse in the survival odds of the human race isn’t confined to America or the West. Our geopolitical enemy, Communist China, is suffering even more seriously, thanks to decades of superstition-based, brutally coercive population control. The country took until the Trump administration to change its “one-child policy” to a “two-child policy,” but the giant ship that is China takes a long time to turn around — even with a government as ruthless as that run by the CCP.
A country needs a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of at least 2.1 just to keep its population from shrinking, as old people start to outnumber young, productive, and fertile folk. Back in 2016, China’s TFR was 1.8. In six short years, that rate plummeted to 1.2. If such trends continue, the Chinese people will die of old age before their nation becomes a wealthy, developed country.
China’s government is now panicking, trying to pressure women to have more babies, but as the chart I cited above indicates, governments are much more effective in stopping births than they are in encouraging them. Nations like Poland and Hungary have elaborate pro-family policies, but their birth rates just keep falling as well.
Outsourcing the Grunting Work to the Third World
Concerning TFR, the US has just 1.7 children per woman (down from 2.1 in 2007). That’s whopping 20%below the bare minimum for maintaining the population. So apart from replacing children of citizens with immigrants trafficked from other countries with their own shrinking birthrates, the U.S. would see its population (and hence its economy, prosperity, and power) shrink by one-fifth in a generation.
What does it say about us as a culture that we don’t believe life is important enough or valuable enough to share it with our children? That we feel we need to outsource reproduction to other, poorer countries — as if it were some low-tech, grim, repetitive job no Americans are ready and willing to do?
The future belongs to those who show up for it. If we don’t persuade people that the Gospel’s good news makes parenthood worthwhile, we and ours will disappear — and be completely replaced by others with other religions that give them a reason to live and pass life along.
Who knew that it took faith in God to convince people that they’re more important than bees?
Jason Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, activist, and human rights worker. He is also the author of three books, the latest of which is The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset.