Dear Elon Musk: Stop Denying Overpopulation!

Elon Musk is a real man of genius, a real-life Tony Stark in fact.  He is also, at least in theory, environmentally conscious as well.  He knows that climate change is a real and urgent problem, while fossil fuels need to be phased out in favor of renewable energy.  And he has long opposed lockdowns before it was cool to do so, and also supports freedom of speech as well.  So far, so good.  

But like many geniuses, he does unfortunately have a massive and glaring blind spot as well.  Not only does he deny the fact that world overpopulation (of humans) is a problem at all, but he literally thinks the biggest problem the world will face is...too FEW people.  Or at least, too few people to realize his ultimate dream of...wait for it...colonizing Mars.  Yes, he actually went on the record saying that.  

This idea is egregiously wrong on SO many levels:

• The Earth is FINITE, and only a fool or an economist (same difference) would believe that infinite growth on a finite world is possible or desirable.
• Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, as Edward Abbey famously said.  Which eventually kills its host, by the way.
• We are already LONG past any reasonable measure of sustainability, and in severe overshoot in terms of carrying capacity and ecological footprint. 
• If everyone in the world lived like the average European, we would need 2 to 3 Earths worth of resources in the long term.  If everyone lived like the average American, we would need a whopping 6 or 7 Earths.  And if everyone lived like Elon Musk, with his five six kids, 120 hour workweeks, and centibillionaire lifestyle, we would probably need at least a thousand Earths!
• Even if everyone lived in an ecovillage, we would still need at least 1.5 Earths, if not more.
• Even with the very best technological breakthroughs that one could ever possibly imagine, that is still not a free lunch in terms of resources and material throughput.  Sooner or later, something's gotta give.
• Thus, if we want everyone on Earth to have anything even remotely close to a decent standard of living (since, you know, condemning billions of people to extreme poverty, suffering, and premature death would be cruel and inhumane), we need to SHRINK the population, or else Mother Nature will brutally shrink it for us.  Not just stop growing, but actually SHRINK down to no more than 2 to 3 billion people (and 150-200 million Americans).  
• Rightsizing the world population is the most truly pro-life thing one could do.
• And last but not least, before we even THINK about colonizing other planets, let's stop messing up the one we currently have!  There really is no "Planet B" for the foreseeable future, if ever.

Fortunately, we can shrink the population ethically and voluntarily using the two most effective methods: 1) female empowerment, and 2) poverty reduction.  Those goals are good for their own sake as well.  And make birth control freely and readily available as well.  No coercion needed.  Problem solved.

But first, we need to completely dispense with the histrionic fears of population decline and the utterly specious, outmoded, and outdated notion that "everybody must procreate".  It is truly maladaptive and insane to maintain this idea any longer.  Honestly, overpopulation deniers are worse than the climate change deniers, and innumeracy is worse than illiteracy.  Denying at least one of the root causes of a problem (along with many other problems too) is by definition worse than denying the consequences.

Jared A. Brock wrote an excellent article about this topic, and you can read it here.

Let the planetary healing begin!

P.S.  If Musk or any other billionaires are still worried that the peasants aren't procreating to their liking, maybe they should literally put their money where their mouth is.  These days, it now costs a whopping $300,000 (up from $250,000 just a couple years ago) to raise even just ONE child from birth to age 18, and that sizeable sum doesn't even begin to include college costs or anything beyond that either.  If they still insist, millions of Millennial and Generation Z current and prospective parents would be glad to send them the bill for that.  Noblesse oblige, right?