Disclaimer: This article may contain the personal views and opinions of the author.
It will come as no surprise to anybody that billionaire Elon Musk is once again in the news. It seems that more and more the question isn’t if Musk will be in the news, but for what.
There is, of course, the infamous Twitter boondoggle, which has culminated in Musk calling the whole thing off. He said that the deal just couldn’t move forward since Twitter wasn’t providing evidence that prove that less than 5% of the users are bots.
It was later reported that Musk publicly criticized President Joe Biden for trading Brittney Griner for someone he referred to as a merchant of death. Now, Musk has something potentially even more important to say.
It is now being reported that:
The founder of Tesla and SpaceX declared Friday that the world needs more people, not less, which contradicts established concepts.
During a podcast with famous pranksters Nelk Boys, Musk said he believes “the biggest threat right now is population collapse,” after adding that “we have to get rid of this nonsense that we’re having an overpopulation issue.”
Watch the whole thing here:
“Don’t we have an overpopulation problem?” they asked. “No, we have an underpopulation,” Musk shot back.
Biologist, natural historian and author Sir David Attenborough believes the exact opposite.
“All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people, and harder — and ultimately impossible — to solve with ever more people,” said Attenborough.
The article went on to report:
Of course, the issue is more nuanced than deciding whether Musk or Attenborough is correct because perception and location matter.
The birthrate in industrialized first-world nations like the U.S. is well below the natural replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman needed to maintain America’s population. Were it not for yearly surges of illegal aliens sneaking across the southern border, the U.S. population would have declined over the last few decades.
The U.S. birthrate is only .63 percent, according to WorldData numbers, which means not enough babies are born in the country to replace the citizens who die each year.
Yet, the birthrates in African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries are well above the replacement birthrate. Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have annual birthrates between 2 and 3 percent.
Zambia, Kuwait, Chad, Angola and Niger have birthrates between 3 and 4 percent. Oman’s annual birthrate is 4.87 percent, according to WorldData.
So, the population issue has indeed become a crisis, at least according to Musk. It may come to pass that the population issue hasn’t quite reached the pitch of crisis. It is worth mentioning that The Wall Street Journal reported that more people died that were actually born in about half of all states last year.
Additionally, there have been early estimates that have come out that say that the population in the United States only grew 0.35% in the year ending July 1, 2020. So, the numbers seem to be against Musk but we will have to see what the various polls and census numbers come in at.
