Elon Musk in a series of tweets on Monday reflected upon the future of humankind and also advocated interstellar travel saying that humans are the ‘stewards of life’. In several tweets posted over the last two days, the Tesla CEO also spoke about what he likes and dislikes about environmentalists.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533600925209837568?s=20&t=K82HDZn4sGb9rKlp0lWVYA
Musk towards the end of May tweeted about how population collapse is the ultimate threat to mankind and also this Sunday pointed out that there are not too many people on earth, as claimed by environmentalists citing population boom as one of the main causes of climate change.
He also expressed concern about Japan as its government once again confirmed that the nation’s birth rate fell by 3.5% from the previous year to 811,604, hitting the lowest level on record.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533410745429413888?s=20&t=GFYLLZGfs4zYYVtQ9hycPQ
“Earth could sustain many times its current human population and the ecosystem would be fine. We definitely don’t have “too many people”,” Musk said.
Musk’s thoughts are similar to a school of thought which says the population will decline because birth rates will drop in many nations as education, income and better healthcare become accessible to more women.
The population boom also came decades after the Industrial Revolution as better medical facilities and hygienic lifestyles meant lesser deaths among infants and children, most notably between the 1850s and 1960s when population expanded massively.
Western nations and some developed nations in Asia – mainly South Korea and Japan – towards the beginning of the 21st century started reporting lesser birth rates. Japan’s lower birth rate sparked fears – and also shed light – on the effect of falling birth rates and raised questions regarding fears of overpopulation.
A Munich-based YouTube channel and animation studio, Kurzgesagt, in one of their videos explain that population growth is a four-step process of demographic transition where in the final step people who were born in the 70s have far fewer children (2.5 compared to 5) than their previous generation.
They also point out that these claims often overlook the Global South, who due to development in terms of women’s education, health and education, are already on the fourth stage of demographic transition, thus choosing to have less or no children.
This also contests the claims put forward by environmentalists who feared the impoverished communities in the Global South would overrun the world by aiding the population explosion.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533606056756137985?s=20&t=GFYLLZGfs4zYYVtQ9hycPQ
“Realized what I have in common with environmentalists, but also why they’re so annoyingly wrong: They are conservationists of what is, whereas they should be conservationists of our potential over time, our cosmic endowment,” Musk said in another tweet, quoting a friend.
Elon’s thoughts are also similar to environmentalist Michael Shellenberger who argues that climate alarmism hurts everyone. The author of the book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, says that environmentalism itself has become the problem of the movement.
He also says that by blocking the development of new technology and not combating poverty, environmentalists will only exacerbate the crisis which humans claim to face because of climate change.
(with inputs from Nikkei Asia, Los Angeles Review Of Books and Kurzgesagt)
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