Elon Musk turns doomsayer, warns world going the Japan way in more deaths, lesser births

Elon Musk has, for most of his life, an outlier when compared to most people. In fact, so contrarian are the man’s views, especially on some of the most burning subjects of our times, that he is engaged in some or the other discourse, in a heated manner no less. One such subject would be population. The world believes that the world as a whole needs to keep the numbers around its population under check and that we are way past the point of a population explosion. The Earth will be in a dire situation if we keep on multiplying like the way we have been.

Not Musk though. He, like always has a wildly different view. Musk believes that the Earth isn’t populated enough, and that given our current population, we will never be able to colonise Mars or any other extraterrestrial body. Musk on Japan’s dwindling population Taking to Twitter, again, repeated his position on population collapse, sharing a warning on Twitter, after Japan reported the lowest number of births in its history last year. Tokyo reported that the number of newborns in the country dropped to 799,728 in 2022, a 5.1 per cent decrease from the previous year, continuing a seven-year decline that exacerbates the difficulties of the Asian nation’s quickly ageing society. Japan’s worrying statistics The tech billionaire sharing a news article on Twitter wrote, “Twice as many people died in Japan last year as were born. Population freefall.” Musk further warned that the trend isn’t stopping and the “Rest of the world is…to follow.” On Tuesday, Japan’s health ministry published statistics showing that birth rates were at their lowest since records started in 1899. During the same time span, the number of fatalities increased by 8.9% to 1.58 million. We realise that the declining birthrate is a critical scenario," said Yoshihiko Isozaki, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, during a briefing. Musk on population collapse Musk has frequently cautioned of a possible population collapse in recent months. Earlier in 2022 Musk expressed concern as China, the world’s most populous nation, revealed its first decline in recent years. Back then, Musk was responding to a BBC story about China possibly experiencing population contraction for the first time since the Great Famine of 1959-61. Musk quoted the piece and highlighted some important aspects, including China having the lowest birthrate on record in 2021 despite having a three-child policy.

He added a foreshadowing caution. “At present fertility rates, China will lose approximately 40% of its population every generation,” Musk predicted. In another post in May of 2022, Musk discussed the unequal spread of population, saying that humans inhabit only a small proportion of the Earth’s surface, which is why people in cities believe the Earth is crowded when it is “basically vacant.” He has also predicted that South Korea’s population will fall to 6% of its present level in three generations, noting the country’s and Hong Kong’s fastest population declines. He lamented at the start of the year that if there aren’t enough people to exist on Earth, there won’t be enough people to occupy Mars, a world he hopes to populate with humans. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .