Elon Musk Want you to have more children to save civilization; are you ready for this?
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, feels that the dropping birthrate is the greatest threat to society, warning that civilisation will “crumble” unless people start having more children.
The father of six remarked at the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council Monday evening, “I think one of the biggest hazards to civilization is the low birthrate and fast dropping birthrate.”
“However, many people, even intelligent people, believe that there are too many people in the world and that population growth is out of control,” Musk concluded.
“It’s the polar opposite.” Please look at the numbers – civilization will fall if people do not have more children, mark my words.”
The billionaire was responding to a query on how his company’s yet-to-be-released Tesla Bot may help with labour issues.
Musk said the 5-foot-8-inch, 125-pound robot might be ready as soon as next year and will have a “profound” influence on the economy by driving down labour costs during an August unveiling ceremony.
On Monday, he said that the Tesla Bot might become a “generalised substitute for human labour over time” – something that will become increasingly important for enterprises as the supply of human labour declines.
According to World Bank data, the worldwide birthrate has been progressively dropping since 1960.
It’s not the first time Musk has expressed concern over the world’s dwindling birthrate. He responded to a New Scientist article in 2017 that posed the question of whether “the population bomb” was about to detonate.
Musk remarked at the time, “The world’s population is racing toward collapse, but few seem to notice or care.”
Morgan Stanley analysts ascribed the decreased birthrate to fears about climate change in July of this year.
They noted at the time that the “movement to not have children due to fears about climate change is growing and harming fertility rates faster than any previous trend in the field of fertility decrease.”
Population collapse is potentially the greatest risk to the future of civilizationhttps://t.co/VVN8kElTlS
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 27, 2021
“Having a child is seven times worse for the climate in terms of annual CO2 emissions than the next ten most talked mitigants that individuals can do,” Morgan Stanley analysts said, adding that many would-be parents are foregoing families in order to lower their own carbon footprint.
Despite evidence showing having fewer children reduces a household’s impact on climate change, scientists say population control isn’t a feasible strategy to address climate change because it would be too late anyhow.
“It is true that more people will consume more resources and generate more greenhouse gas emissions,” Kimberley Nicholas, a sustainability science researcher in Sweden, said in an interview with Vox earlier this year.
“However, considering that we have this decade to cut emissions in half, that isn’t really the important timescale for truly stabilising the climate.”
