Global population is collapsing? Musk vs. reality

Populists are claiming the global population is shrinking so we all must have more babies — if you happen to be white. Nothing about that is true.

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Enjoy this fine chart posted on Xitter recently:

Some random chart favored by populists and frequently retweeted on Xitter

The Y axis is helpfully not labeled, but it probably represents the number of children per woman. If so, the results are to be expected. The global birth rate has been declining since 1963 — back toward a more sustainable, lower level:

This is a good thing. As you can see above, in the 1950s, the average woman was having 5 children!!! As a result, global population has been growing out of control since WWII:

With the two lines overlaid, you can see that it’s essential to get birth rates under control to slow this massive overpopulation problem we’ve got. Overpopulation directly leads to the following problems:¹

• Shortages of food, water, energy, and other resources

• Greater pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, worsening climate change, and ecosystem collapse

• Shortages of housing, healthcare, transportation, and other public services

• More infectious disease, more pandemics

• Increased unemployment, poverty, and social unrest

• Lower education and even more births.

This is exactly why international aid organizations promote birth control in developing economies. When you can help people in the poorest countries get their birth rate under control, you create the following; which help the people of that country in every way:

• Reduction of maternal and infant death²

• Allows women to purse education and work, boosting economic development³

• Children in small families are healthier than children in large families⁴

• Lowers healthcare costs by reducing pregnancy-related complications and unsafe abortions⁵

• Slows population growth, easing pressure on resources and public services — all the things above.

In fact, reducing birth rates is so important that no nation has ever made it from “developing” to “developed” without first bringing their population growth under control.⁶

So why is Elon Musk telling everyone to have more children?

Elon Musk (who has 13 known children so far) is the most visible champion of the alleged “threat” of our “collapsing global population.”⁷ Click here to see a list of many of his recent tweets, claiming population “collapse” is the greatest threat to humanity. He has called this imaginary population shrinkage:

• Catastrophic

• A massive crisis

• An existential problem

• How civilizations have ended

Well, no. None of that is close to true. Global population is climbing, dramatically, today, not shrinking and certainly not “collapsing” — making all the problems just discussed worse. Economists are currently projecting that world population will peak in the mid-2080s at about 10.3 billion people — over 2 billion more than we have today — and will reduce to about 10.2 billion by 2100, as more nations achieve higher standards of living.⁸

It’s odd to me how Musk can be so wrong about things that are so easy to learn. However it may come into clearer focus when we look at some of the replies to his tweets:

Ah. There we have it. “High IQ populations” vs “low IQ populations.” We know for a fact that there are no national populations less intelligent than others; but we also know that the countries with the best handle on reducing their birthrates tend to be white and wealthier, while those with higher birth rates tend to be brown and poorer.

And guess what. Musk has a long history of amplifying long-debunked “race science” claims that people of color are dumber and white people are smarter.⁹ He’s even said outright that Black students have lower IQs.¹⁰

And then there’s that second reply, that it’s about “masculinity.” A masculine man is one who goes around spraying his seed everywhere and replicating his virile self in as many babies as possible. It is only when we “mock” that, that he elects to stop spraying. So apparently we must celebrate masculinity also, in order to get birth rates back up.

That’s a familiar theme for Musk as well. “Masculinity is making a comeback,” he said when Trump won the election.¹¹ And, yes, he’s also said that “Low-testosterone leadership” has been promoting policies that discourage reproduction, and that he wants “high status males” in positions of leadership.¹²

So if I might go out on a limb to condense a conclusion from all of this, I might say that Elon Musk (and the populists in general) promote the fictional crisis of a declining population to whitewash their real desire for white men to have more babies in order to make the world population whiter, and for people of color to be fewer and fewer.

But that’s just my read.

1. https://www.populationmedia.org/the-latest/overpopulation-cause-and-effect

2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26956690/

3. https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP176.html

4. https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2017/08/benefits-investing-international-family-planning-and-price-slashing-funding

5. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/07/the-economic-benefits-of-family-planning/

6. https://www.populationmedia.org/the-latest/population-and-economics

7. https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-birth-rate-warning-us-2062571

8. https://www.un.org/en/UN-projects-world-population-to-peak-within-this-century

9. https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/elon-musk-is-spreading-centuriesold-racist-pseudoscience/

10. https://futurism.com/civil-rights-groups-horrified-elon-musk-racist

11. https://www.firstpost.com/world/masculinity-is-back-musk-says-2025-looks-good-as-trump-won-trudeau-resigned-and-starmer-got-exposed-13850581.html

12. https://traumaawareamerica.org/2025/01/16/elon-musk-and-the-normalization-of-aggressive-masculinity-a-neurobiological-perspective/