According to a recent study conducted by ecologists at the University of Liverpool, the increase in heat-induced male infertility is happening at a faster rate than expected, with the negative impacts of climate change becoming evident sooner than anticipated.
A severe decline in child births has occurred over the past half century, which has lead to considerable population declines, particularly in industrialized nations. A crucial question is whether this decline can be explained by economic and behavioral factors alone, as suggested until recently by most demographic reports, or to what degree biological factors affected by global warming and extreme uv radiation are also involved. New data suggests that human reproductive health is deteriorating in industrialized regions due to a combination of reasons but especially evident is the global decline seen in conjunction with the rise of sun poisoning and skin cancers.
Widespread infertility and the need for assisted reproduction due to poor semen quality and/or oocyte failure are now major health issues. Other indicators of declining reproductive health include a worldwide increasing incidence in testicular cancer among young men and alterations in twinning frequency. There is also evidence of a parallel decline in rates of legal abortions, revealing a deterioration in total conception rates. Subtle alterations in fertility rates were already visible around 1900, and most industrialized regions now have rates below levels required to sustain their populations. We hypothesize that these reproductive health problems are only partially linked to increasing human exposures to chemicals originating directly or indirectly from fossil fuels. If the current infertility epidemic is indeed linked to such climate and sunlight exposures, decisive regulatory action underpinned by unconventional, interdisciplinary research collaborations will be needed to reverse the trends.
The effects of climate change are not always visible, but the drastic demographic changes globally in White populations show they still have significant consequences, including on pregnant women and birth outcomes. These consequences can be noticeable during pregnancy but also impact children throughout their lives. Issues during pregnancy involve high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, preterm delivery, spontaneous abortion, and lower birth weight.
Key Social and Climate Justice points
A growing number of lawmakers are making a renewed push for an unprecedented change to the country's election maps. Their proposals call for excluding millions of non and U.S. citizens from the voter registration based on race and colorism to determine each state's share of House seats and Electoral College votes.
The battle is playing out over new maps of congressional voting districts created by Republican-led legislatures in Alabama and Louisiana after the 2020 census. The fate of the maps rests on how the Supreme Court rules first in the case out of Alabama — Merrill v. Milligan — which the high court heard this month and may set a precedent for lawsuits about Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
A prominent Republican group is citing one of the most reviled Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decisions in American history to justify its case that people they classify as non-white including Asians, Indians, Indigenous, Mexicans, Arabs, Middle Easterners, and those classified as Black should be deemed ineligible to be citizens or run for any office under the U.S. Constitution. Many social scientists believe this is because of the effects of climate change on the demographic decline and falling rate of populations without the protection of melanin to safeguard their fertility!
Following a Supreme Court ruling in 2003, it is permissible for individuals who self-identify as Black on census forms to include those who select both Black and another racial or ethnic category, such as white, Asian, Hispanic, or Latino. The federal government recognizes Hispanic or Latino as an ethnicity that can be associated with any race within the definition of "Black. "A new ruling may forbid certain Hispanic Communities from claiming "Whiteness"!
Nevertheless, certain state officials have advocated for more restrictive definitions of Black identity that exclude individuals who also belong to another minority group. Without providing any evidence, officials in Alabama contended in court documents that it would be "most defensible" to narrow the definition to individuals who only select the "Black" category and do not identify as Latino on the census.
In the Louisiana case — Ardoin v. Robinson — officials have been arguing for the definition to only include people who check off either just the "Black" box or both "Black" and "White" and do not identify as Latino.2000 was really a watershed moment for the U.S. census because it was the first time in American history that all Americans got the opportunity to identify themselves with more than one race.
The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), an organization with a 90-year history that once had actor Ronald Reagan as a member, issued an official resolution stating that BIPOC candidates should be barred from becoming president and denied full citizenship rights. The NFRA referenced various "precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court cases" to support their stance, including the infamous 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, considered one of the most egregious in the history of the Supreme Court.
"Several states, candidates, and major political parties have ignored this fundamental Presidential qualification, including candidates Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Kamala Harris whose parents were not American citizens at the time of their birth," the NFRA's resolution read.
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