By now, we know climate change is a serious threat to the wellbeing of the planet and the people who inhabit it. But climate change’s effects go beyond wild weather, melting glaciers, and loss of food security. Perhaps most personally relevant and devastating to young men are the ways climate change is affecting your junk. Yes, the volatile atmosphere is attacking your manhood, and we’re not just being alarmist. In this Deep Dive, we’ll examine how global warming is messing with your anatomy.
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Deep Dive Climate Change And Your Junk
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Climate change lowers your libido.
When the heat is on, men are less likely to get it on. Aside from anecdotal evidence, we know this because of statistics that show that when temperatures rise above 80 degrees, the birth rate nine months later (the length of pregnancy) dropped by 0.4 percent. The hotter it gets, the less hot and bothered we’ll be (at least about sex; tempers, however, are shorter when the mercury skyrockets).
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Climate change makes you soft.
Testosterone is the main male sex hormone. It’s essential for making you horny, sure, but it also plays other important roles in your body, like ensuring you can achieve and maintain an erection. As heat rises, testosterone decreases, meaning a lot more semi-hards and disappointed lovers. Testosterone also fortifies muscles, bones, confidence, and energy; as your levels diminish, you’ll become more lethargic and blob-like – and nobody’s going to want to fuck you like that. While you could theoretically supplement with synthetic testosterone, the side effects (mood swings, acne, insomnia) are just as unappealing as the low testosterone symptoms themselves.
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Climate change kills your sperm.
Climate change means an increase in heatwaves, and heatwaves are murder for male fertility. One study found that a heatwave can cut male beetles’ fertility in half and repeated heatwaves resulted in male sterility. Granted, this was a study done on insects, but the researchers cited other evidence that mammals react similarly when subjected to severe heat.
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Climate change might spur on sex changes.
OK, this has only been shown to be true in reptiles, but it’s still fascinating. When exposed to temps above 90 degrees, male Australian central bearded dragons have begun overriding their male chromosomes, spurring on the growth of female genitalia instead. Gender-fluid future, here we come!
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Climate change means more men.
Climate and gender at birth have a complicated relationship. Recent research showed that the warmer the temperatures, the more boys are born. Specifically, when the temp rose 1.8 degrees, there was a corresponding 0.06% increase in the ratio of boys to girls born. What might this mean for you? Well, if you’re straight, it means more competition for women and potentially fewer opportunities for sex. Heat isn’t the only factor that will make it harder to partner up, either; as weather patterns become more severe and chaotic, more climate disasters will occur. These “acts of God” tend to disproportionately affect women, often in fatal ways, further limiting the mating pool. If you find a good woman, put a ring on it faster, fellas!
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Climate change means summer penis all year round.
This might be the one piece of good news related to climate change and your junk. Plenty of men report that their members swell during the summer months. This is because as heat increases, so does blood flow. With more frequent sweltering days ahead, does this mean you’ll be packing more, um, heat all year round? A guy can hope.
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Climate change also means more sweaty balls.
There goes any chance of you getting head in the future. We don’t even want to smell ourselves in summer.
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The Takeaway
Climate change is real and it is dangerous. But your junk probably isn’t going to be the first (or most important) casualty in the Earth’s decline. Since younger generations seem less interested in making babies anyway, the unintended sterility won’t be a major bummer for many men. The bigger scare is how heat might affect your hormones, especially testosterone, which is a seriously powerful force in the male body and affects pretty much every system.
If you weren’t concerned enough about climate change to take action before now, just think about what life would be like with no get-up-and-go and no sexual desire (or a proper erection or available partner to have sex with). That’s the sad future of masculinity thanks to climate change. (Shudder.) Instead of despairing, though, get involved with an organization like Greenpeace, the Sunrise Movement, or the People’s Climate Movement. Even just throwing money at the environmental do-gooders is better than doing nothing.
