Opinions

Zen Worry of the Day: Population Collapse


One of the perks — and quirks — of being a multibillionaire is having to worry about things others don’t worry about. While some of us try to douse real or manufactured fears about a population explosion, Worrier Prince Elon Musk wants us to fret over a population collapse. On Tuesday, ‘Tesla Owners of East Bay’ (in San Francisco) lauded him for ‘making tangible efforts’ to keep population collapse at bay — these efforts include being the biological et al father of seven children (one child had passed away).

His response: the shrinking number of humans is, indeed, a worry. So, how sleepless should our nights be worrying about something that old paranoid Malthus would have been overjoyed about? One projection has it that by 2100, the world population growth will be practically zero — that is, the number of people getting born will be the same as the number of people dying.

And, after that, Earth could resemble a giant Japan — the real fear being not ‘dehumanisation’, but too many old people not contributing to society/economy to take care of. With Musk adding that Mars is still empty, and that he intends to have his eighth child be a girl, our worries about civilisation ending not with a bang but with empty cities are less severe. Perhaps it’s because we’re closer to the not-so-pastoral landscape of a Bandra station platform.



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