“Be fruitful and multiply.” This is essentially the message sent by tech billionaire Elon Musk, who, for not the first time, is warning of population collapse.
Issuing his statement on Twitter yesterday, Musk was alluding to the world’s long-declining birthrates and lamented, “If there aren’t enough people for Earth, then there definitely won’t be enough for Mars.”
Of course, one could wonder what Musk’s concern really is, as in the past he has said the probability is high that all of humanity is living in a Matrix-like virtual-reality program. But while this notion is eccentric, to say the least, his population concerns are an actual reality demographers have spoken about for decades.
As Musk tweeted:
This inspired an amusing exchange (tweet below) with a respondent who alluded to how the billionaire’s actual fecundity matches his intellectual variety (he has six children).
Reporting on the story, Benzinga related what motivated the tech visionary’s warning, writing that “Musk’s comments come amid reports of a growing number of people around the world deciding not to have children due to concerns such as climate change, inequality and financial worries.”
“Musk dreams of colonizing Mars and founded his space company SpaceX with the mission to make humanity multiplanetary,” the site later added. “He recently said SpaceX will land humans on Mars in five to 10 years.”
As for “colonizing” the Red Planet, some may wonder what the selling point is. Being further from the sun, Mars’ average temperature is approximately “minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius),” Space.com informs. “In winter, near the poles[,] temperatures can get down to minus 195 degrees F (minus 125 degrees C).” Gee, sounds nice.
We also couldn’t breathe Mars’ atmosphere because it contains hardly any oxygen; it’s 95 percent carbon dioxide (you know, because of all the factories’ and cars’ greenhouse emissions and what not. And that’s why the planet is so hot!). So while John Gray did write that book whose title begins Men Are From Mars, I’ll say “Thanks,” but this man will keep his feet on terrestrial ground. We could start a new trend, though:
Leftists are from Mars; conservatives are from Earth.
Joking (and fantasies) aside, many find talk of a “population collapse” fantastical itself, indoctrinated as they are with Soylent Green presuppositions. For example, responding to the Benzinga article, commenter Tim Entler wrote, “We cannot even take care of the population we have now let alone anymore so it is a good thing the birthrate is declining as it is already unsustainable.”
Yet this is a myth. In reality, man produces more food than the world needs (much is wasted), and almost 90 percent of humanity has access to electricity. In fact, even left-wing Think Progress reported in 2013 that the standard of living worldwide was at a historic high (though COVID-paranoia-driven restrictions might have caused some economic regression since then).
Moreover, this progress and human resource acquisition not only can be achieved without ravaging nature, but actually correlates with healthier environments; i.e., the freest, most prosperous nations have the best environments.
As for population realities, fertility rates are below replacement level in almost 100 countries worldwide, and demographers have long been informing us that, consequently, the Earth’s population will begin declining around the middle of this century.
We can believe this is a good thing or a bad thing — and it apparently has both positives and negatives — but for certain it is a real thing. And while Benzinga cited “climate change, inequality and financial worries” as scaring people into barrenness, the actual causes are far more complex.
Just consider the very interesting 2008 documentary Demographic Winter, which lists five main reasons for the worldwide drop in fertility: the sexual revolution, prosperity, the divorce revolution, inaccurate assumptions, and women working. The documentarians mention the pill, which has reduced unwanted pregnancies among married women by 70 percent; promiscuity, which affords men sexual gratification without commitment; reluctance to have children when there is the possibility one’s spouse won’t be around in a few years; and career-driven women having few children; along with other factors. Demographic Winter (video below) also touches on materialism and immaturity, which make people reluctant to assume the responsibilities of parenthood.
Demographic Winter also stresses that robust birthrates are necessary for economic prosperity. Yet assuming this was true, it may no longer be so with the advent of artificial intelligence and increasing automation (not as widely discussed when the documentary was produced in 2008), which are poised to replace a large swath of the human workforce in coming decades.
What’s more, while family formation should be encouraged and parenthood exalted, higher populations also pose challenges, not the least of which is that great population density invites big government (video below). This is just one reason to be wary of our current (im)migration-fired population growth (the United States’ fertility rate is 1.781, below replacement level).
In 1969, the U.S. population was 200 million; now it’s 334 million. Based on current trends, it’s poised to rise to 500 million and beyond, too — all due to (im)migration — and figures such as Glenn Beck advocate increasing our numbers to one billion.
Yet balkanized and beset by Big Brother is no way to go through life, son. And whether the issue ends up being too many people or just too many unassimilable ones, we shouldn’t count on being able to send them all to Mars.
