Today’s surprising factoid comes from Mark Steyn, after a few paragraphs on the voluntary depopulation movement:

Lest you think the above are “extremists,” consider how deeply invested the “mainstream” is in a total fiction. At the recent climate jamboree in Bali, the Reverend Al Gore told the assembled faithful: “My own country the United States is principally responsible for obstructing progress here.” Really? “The American Thinker” website ran the numbers. In the seven years between the signing of Kyoto in 1997 and 2004, here’s what happened:

• Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
• Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
• Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
• Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

It’s hard not to conclude a form of mental illness has gripped the world’s elites. If you’re one of that dwindling band of westerners who’ll be celebrating the birth of a child, “homeless” or otherwise, next week, make the most of it. A year or two on, and the eco-professors will propose banning nativity scenes because they set a bad example.

Stepping back for the broad view of cultural implication, one gets the impression that the world’s elites (as a group) no longer wish to undertake the responsibility of children, so realizing the inexorable nature of demographic shifts, they’re attempting to persuade the rest of us not to disturb the ratio of power.
I realize that there may be mitigating considerations relevant to Steyn’s emissions numbers (such as the market types and stages of each category). I wonder, however, whether there are similar considerations when it comes to, say, claims about the increasing disproportion of relative wealth. Perhaps the low-end group is growing while the high-end shrinks (per capita) for the plain reason that the former continues to have children while the latter has fewer.