Feel like the body of evidence suggesting that the modern chemical environment (water and air pollution especially) is a key part of low fertility is important to think about when we think about lowest-low TFRs and fertility transition.

The extent to which declining fertility is simply caused by bad air and water during industrialization is definitively >0%; the stack of studies on water pollution and growing body on air pollution show that.

But can we explain 2% of the decline in fertility associated with economic development through the pollution channel? Or 20%? Or 40%?

Long time followers know this: I want to greatly expand wilderness preservation, regulate air and water pollution, and impose a carbon tax to pay for baby benefits.

I see the Pronatal-Green Fusion as almost a logical imperative on both sides! https://twitter.com/elephant_ben/status/1362457795002392577

The expected utility of environmental preservation rises as the number of humans who will enjoy that preserved environment rises, and the expected lifetime total utility for every child rises as the exhaustible resources their generation inherits rises!

It is extremely strange to me that environmentalism and pronatalism get pitted as opponents when there's literally no ethical purpose for environmental protection beyond "unborn future generations" and "I want more babies but don't want to steward Creation for them" is also weird

Of course as a frothing-at-the-mouth-bible-thumping-religious-extremist I have a separate motivation for each of these beliefs independently; it seems rather clear to me Biblically that God told us to take care of the earth and also to multiply upon it.

But you needn't share my obviously correct religious opinions to see the rather clear logical tie between pronatalism and environmentalism; both are basically just questions of the discount rates you should use on the quality of lives of generations not yet born.

If you support environmental protection and preservation, then you think it is ethically important to impose costs (harms) on currently-living people to yield benefits which will primarily accrue beyond the likely death date of most of the people bearing those costs.

This could imply one or both of two things: 1) you believe it is axiomatically good to preserve the earth; this is essentially a religious perspective and I share it, but it may be even more common in religious worldviews on the left than the right....

2) you assign some non-zero ethical value to lives which do not yet exist, but which will benefit from the preservation involved