Elon Musk sounds alarm on population collapse
Elon Musk, the worldâs richest man and Tesla CEO, warned that the nation of Japan will eventually âcease to exist.â
Musk, who has repeatedly spoken out about the dangers of population collapse, was responding to an article about population decline in Japan in 2021. The decline marked a drop of 644,000 to 125.5 million in the span of 12 months.
âAt risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist. This would be a great loss for the world,â Musk tweeted.
At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist. This would be a great loss for the world.
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2022
It wouldnât be the first time Musk has spoken out about the topic of population collapse. In January, the SpaceX founder said that the world should be âmuch more worried about population collapseâ and slammed the United Nationâs projections on population growth.
According to the United Nations, the world will continue to see an upward trend in population growth over the next 80 years, with some developing countries exceeding over a billion in population.
âUN projections are utter nonsense,â wrote Musk. âJust multiply last yearâs births by life expectancy. Given downward trend in birth rate, that is best case unless reversed. If there arenât enough people for Earth, then there definitely wonât be enough for Mars.â
UN projections are utter nonsense. Just multiply last yearâs births by life expectancy. Given downward trend in birth rate, that is best case unless reversed.
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 18, 2022
In the same thread, Musk linked to several articles published by NPR and BBC, noting the alarming drop in world births. In one of the articles, as reported by NPR, the U.S. birth rate fell by 4% in 2020.
The drop occurred for the sixth year in a row.
âIf the alarming collapse in birth rate continues, civilization will indeed die with a whimper in adult diapers,â Musk warned in a separate tweet.
In March, Musk responded to a YouTube video identifying Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine, in which he singled out Russiaâs low birth rate as a âfoundational issue.â
He asked: âAfter all, what good is land with no people?â
Last year, Musk called birth rate collapse the âbiggest threat to human civilizationâ in response to an infographic posted by Simon Kuestenmacher.
âElegant way of showing global fertility data for every country in 2019. Itâs actually a rather elegant visual. Spend a few minutes studying it and might become as big as a fan of the piece as I am,â Kuestenmacher said.
Birth rate collapse is the biggest threat to human civilization
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 22, 2021

Ian Miles Cheong
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Ian Miles Cheong is a freelance writer, graphic designer, journalist and videographer. Heâs kind of a big deal on Twitter.
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