Elon Musk, everyone’s favorite obscenely wealthy individual, is again in the headlines, this time raising the alarm about a huge catastrophe confronting civilization. This time, it is not artificial intelligence or climate change that is to blame, but rather the growing tendency of people not to have children. Musk downplayed concerns about overpopulation during a Wall Street Journal CEO Council conference last week, suggesting that dropping birth rates may lead to society collapse.
On Monday night, he remarked, “I think one of the biggest hazards to civilization is the low birthrate and quickly dropping birthrate.” “However, many individuals, even intelligent ones, believe there are too many people in the world and that population growth is out of control.”It’s the polar opposite,” he continued.
“Please look at the figures – society will fall if people do not have more children, mark my words.” The Telsa and SpaceX CEO appear to practice what he preaches as a father of seven children. He has previously tweeted on the subject, saying in July 2021, “Population collapse is a lot greater concern than people think, and that’s just for Earth.” Because the population of Mars is now nonexistent, it has a significant need for humans.”
The human population was fewer than 1 billion at the turn of the nineteenth century. This number had risen to over 2.5 billion by the mid-twentieth century. The population of the world grew rapidly during the next 70 years, reaching 7.8 billion people in 2021.
The concept of overpopulation refers to the possibility that the global human population may outgrow our environment and natural resources. The notion has been around since the Industrial Revolution when breakthroughs in medical science and industry saw a meteoric rise in world population, but it was popularized Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling 1968 book, The Population Bomb.
It is, nevertheless, a highly divisive concept. Many academics feel it is a complete fantasy, claiming that the projected “population disaster” never happened and that, in reality, the world’s population is stabilizing. According to a recent estimate, the world population is expected to expand continuously until peaking at roughly 9.7 billion people in 2064, then decreasing to 8.8 billion by 2100.
This will be the first time the world population has decreased since the 14th century’s Black Death disease outbreak. Many others claim that the idea of overpopulation is polluted by racism and sexism and that governments concerned with overpopulation have perpetrated human rights violations such as forced sterilization and single-child laws.