PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Shot: The depopulation timebomb facing the West is about to explode.
Elon Musk’s quest to make humanity a multi-planet species has a hitch.
The SpaceX boss hopes to have people landing on Mars within five years as part of his vision for a “futuristic Noah’s ark”. But Musk fears his plan to colonise the Red Planet will fail to take off if Earth cannot even sustain its own population.
“We should be much more worried about population collapse,” Musk warned in a series of tweets last week, calling the UN’s more sanguine projections “utter nonsense”.
“If there aren’t enough people for Earth, then there definitely won’t be enough for Mars.”
Once a problem far in the future, the population crisis is arriving earlier than expected after the Covid baby bust. Populations in countries including Japan are already in decline, while those in the likes of Spain, South Korea and China are set to halve by 2100.
But for some, including Sir David Attenborough, the big population bust should not be feared. The nature broadcaster has called for the global population to be brought under control in order to maintain living standards, calling humanity a “plague on Earth”.
—The London Telegraph, January 22nd. Incidentally, it’s nice of Attenborough to be honest about what he thinks about his viewers.
Chaser: Can the world cope with billions more people?
—The London Telegraph, April 14th, 2009.
I look forward to numerous geriatric rock stars cancelling Paul Ehrlich for spreading false information.