Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm Shane Morris.

For a long time, if you encountered a writer warning about declining global birth rates, it was a safe bet you were reading a right-leaning or Christian publication.

But that appears to be changing. In the last couple of years, mainstream news outlets seem to have caught on that the problem

civilization now faces is not too many but too few babies and some are sounding

the alarm recent stories in The Spectator, the New York Times, and the

Washington Post all clearly describe why a shrinking and aging society is a

bad thing and try to identify the causes behind this population bust. The fear of a population

bomb haunts the mainstream psyche greatly due to Paul Erlich's 1968, the population Bomb, in which he famously declared in the opening line

that, quote, the battle to feed all of humanity is over and predicted mass starvation due to overpopulation.

This of course never happened and in fact global food production vastly outpaced population

growth making it easier than ever to feed everyone.

Facts aside, the baby-baning ideology persists.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post editorial board

ran a response to the surge of critical comments they've received on stories about declining birth

rates.

As anyone familiar with the comments section under controversial or really any article would expect,

a litany of bad arguments had been unfolding.

One commenter wrote that, quote, endless growth, whether it's of the population or the economy,

is an unachievable fantasy. Another declared, quote,

now is the time to reject growthist ideology for good. Many cited climate change

overcrowding and of course running out of food as reasons to encourage lower birth rates.

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