• Happy Friday! Half the world’s population could face a global-warming-induced food crisis by 2100, according to a new study.

• And then there’s the floods…

• Need proof that evolution’s more than just a “theory”? Look no further.

• The fruit flies are back! And this time, it’s not just Palin dissing them.

• “Dear Obama: Please bring me cap and trade legislation this year.” A wish list from environmentalists.

• The U.S. isn’t the only tech sector getting slammed by the downturn.

• And now for a lesson in brutal honesty: How much does racism really bother you?

It’s been a rough few weeks for anything male. According to a study released this week, males of just about every species are being feminized—or even wiped out of existence—by the slew of unregulated chemicals in our water and environment.

And for those already locked in male adulthood, there’s more bad news: Men in New York City are reportedly losing their desire for sex because of the financial crisis. According to a (highly non-scientific, but not unbelievable) trend piece in the New York Post, many former masters of the universe are shunning coitus due to anxiety over job losses, lost wealth, and other monetary realities of 2008.

While a host of psycho-social factors are likely behind this reported mass libido-loss (assuming that it’s true), it’s possible that a growing disinterest in sex during an economic crisis is linked to physiology, and perhaps even evolution. In other words, hard economic times may translate into a built-in desire for less procreation.

We know that economic hard times and sex/birthrates are linked: fertility declines during recessions, primarily due to the fact that families know they’ll have a harder time raising children. Children born during downturns may also feel the brunt of the economy during gestation and infancy, according to recent research indicating that being born during a recession could lead to a shorter life span.

Given these factors, it’s not a stretch to think the male libido might slow down as a natural reaction to drastic economic conditions. On a physiological level, a man who loses his cave/401K/high-powered job will likely experience a drop in testosterone, one of the hormones primarily responsible for sexual functioning.

Granted, whether or not all the laid-off female bankers are feeling similarly less-than-aroused has yet to be explored.

Related:
RB: Sexual Harassment: A Bad Plan for Population Growth

A Russian judge has thrown out a 22-year-old advertising executive’s sexual harassment claim against her boss because “If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” according to the Telegraph U.K.

The plaintiff’s claim included allegations that her 47-year-old boss had demanded sex from every female employee and had locked her out of her office after she refused to have “intimate relations” with him. The judge didn’t toss out the case on the theory that these facts weren’t true, or even that they didn’t constitute sexual harassment. Rather, he ruled that such harassment was harmless—a view that has precedent in Russian courts, given that only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the fall of the Soviet Union.

But the presumptive logic underlying the ruling—that sex harassment in the workplace could help grow the country’s population, which has been in decline to the point where the government has stepped in to pass child-bearing initiatives—is hardly good science, not to mention a poor legal precedent.

While workplace sex harassment in Russia is common to the point of being expected—a recent survey of professional Russian women found that a whopping 100 percent had been sexually harassed by their bosses, and 32 percent had had sex with their manager at least once—the judge is making several major assumptions about the link between more sex on the job and more Russian babies. Assuming a boss impregnates his secretary, either through semi-consensual sex as a result of harassment or from full-on rape, the odds are pretty high that the pregnancy will be unwanted, making the woman more likely to abort. Russia’s abortion rate is already sky-high—while the total population in 2006 was around 143 million, the total number of abortions that year was around 1.6 million (compare that to the mere 1.2 million abortions in the U.S. in 2005, despite a more-than-double population size).

Plus there’s the fact that, in the wake of the country’s economic collapse, it’s still pretty tough to support yourself, let alone a child, in Russia, which could help explain why women are putting up with such massive levels of on-the-job harassment in the first place. While getting assaulted by your boss may be the only way to pay the bills, it sure isn’t incentive to give birth to more Russian babies.

Image: iStockPhoto