Elon Musk warns of population collapse; asserts 'we need enough humans for Mars'

Elon Musk, who has been vocal about his stance on global population, has issued ar warning about future of humans on Earth as well as Mars. In his recent tweet shared on January 18, Tesla and X boss said that we should be worried about 'population collapse' and implied that a higher population is needed to ensure human settlement on Mars.

"We should be much more worried about population collapse", Musk wrote on Twitter. "If re aren’t eugh people for Earth, n re definitely won’t be eugh for Mars", he ded in his second tweet.

In a thre, Musk also thrashed projections of United Nations, which in 2019 h said that global population will be up by two billion till 2050 and up to 11 billion till 2100. "UN projections are utter nsense. Just multiply last year’s births by life expectancy. Given downward trend in birth rate, that is best case unless reversed", Musk wrote. 

falling global fertility rate

According to a 2020 report published by BBC, fertility rate, which is aver number of births per woman, has dropped from 4.7 in 1950 to 2.4 in 2017. Researchers from  University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation have predicted that this number will furr dip below 1.7 by end of this century. 

As a result, almost every country might see its population shrink by 2030. BBC reported that Japan might see its population come down to 53 million by 2100 from a peak of 128 million in 2017. Moreover, Italy's population might also fall from 61 million to 28 million along with China, which will peak at 1.4 billion but drop to 732 million by 2100. Musk also shared an NPR article where it was reported that US witnessed a 4% decline in number of babies born in 2020 than previous year. In  US, number required to replace a population is 2,100 births per 1,000 women, which fell to 1,637.5 births in 2020, according to NPR. se reports show why Musk is worried about Earth t having eugh people, which would affect population planning to settle humans on Mars.