Part of the problem with using academics and scientists as objective arbiters, is they tend to be overly focused on such myriad details and not generalists, looking at the bigger picture.

As some of the other commentators have observed, much of what is going on, is to obscure the basic class tensions those with the wealth would prefer obscured. Much as you mentions the Left has gone from a focus on labor issues, to gender issues.

I recall Bob Dylan mentioning some years ago, the history of Jim Crow laws were specifically meant to keep poor whites and blacks from identifying along class lines. Divide and conquer.

Think of it in terms of abortion; Why isn't the debate over a society where those most able to have children, the relatively young, are supported by the larger society and not treated as more economic prey by society? "It takes a village to raise a child."

The fact is that if anyone actually looked at how society functions as a larger social super organism, in order to be healthy, one's status and value needs to be a function of how much one adds to the overall welfare, not how much one can extract. The only way our society manages to do this and not totally collapse, is the degree that finite resources and bursts of useful technology have kept it going. Yet it is evident that is not going to go on forever.

So there needs to be that larger discussion, about how life functions and not have everything be distractions from the real issues.

The parasites are killing the host.