Billionaire Elon Musk is among a group of wealthy Westerners who are convinced the key to saving the planet is to load it down with an ever-increasing number of people. As The Guardian reports, these “pronatalists” insist that large families are the only solution to the doom they see ahead in which “There are going to be countries of old people starving to death.”
The movement claims to be logic-based and driven by data showing a decline in global birth rates. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk, who is a father of 11, believes “population collapse due to low birthrates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is another pronatalist who has invested millions in reproductive technology startups aimed at increasing human fertility.
“Of course, I’m going to have a big family,” Altman said. “I think having a lot of kids is great.” That’s a not-so-bold declaration from someone whose wealth means his children will never want for anything—including people hired to raise them.
But it’s hard to escape the feeling that this isn’t about saving civilization: It’s about extremely wealthy people who want to spread their genes to a maximum number of offspring and establish a kind of genetic elite on a planet that already has more than enough people.
In the 1960s, the book “The Population Bomb” warned of a rapidly growing human population and the consequences of continued, unchecked growth. That book, by Stanford biologist and ecologist Paul Ehrlich, insisted that the increase in the human population was outpacing the growth of the food supply and that the result would be widespread famine and a decline in civilization.
At the time, the global population was 3.5 billion. Ehrlich noted that the number had nearly doubled in the space of a single generation, was on pace to do it again, and that the Earth was quickly approaching its capacity to feed and sustain so many people.
However, since then the Green Revolution greatly increased agricultural productivity and improving conditions around the globe helped drop the fertility rate from nearly five children to just over two children per woman. While large famines have continued, things have been much less dire than predicted—though the climate crisis is threatening that delicate balance.
It’s become popular to cite “The Population Bomb” as an example of doom-saying that didn’t come to pass, and a parallel is often drawn with predictions about the climate crisis. But Ehrlich’s prescription for avoiding his most dire forecasts was setting limits on population growth. That happened on its own, without the government intervention that Ehrlich thought would be necessary.
At the heart of the pronatalist movement is a conviction that there is no limit to how many people Earth can bear, that productivity will always outpace fertility, and that past concerns about population levels are outdated. However, at this moment, when adding up the weight of every mammal on Earth, humans account for 34% of the total biomass. The livestock we raise to feed us is another 62%. Every whale and gorilla, every gray wolf and zebra, every black rhino and Bengal tiger, every wild animal you know (and those you don’t) is already squeezed into the 4% of the biomass that remains.
Pronatalists want to squeeze harder.
While the world population growth has slowed, it hasn’t moved into negative territory. Based on the best current predictions, the Earth’s population is expected to pass 9 billion in the 2030s and 10 billion soon after 2050. The U.S. population alone increased by 20 million in the past decade.
Assuming that these U.S. millionaires and billionaires expect their numerous offspring to live like Americans, that means each new child can be expected to kick out 16 tons of carbon dioxide per year and throw away over 450 pounds of single-use plastic per year—and that will be only part of the 1,642 pounds added to landfills each year. These are problems that seem as if they might need more immediate attention.
The ultrawealthy can pretend all they want, but the Earth does not have unlimited resources. All of this seems like nothing but an excuse to see how close each of them can come to matching the genetic footprint of Genghis Khan.
And there’s another factor that may be as ugly and threatening as any environmental concern.
See if you can spot the problem in this statement by pronatalist superstar Malcolm Collins fretting over declining birth rates. The issue of declining population is most acute, says Malcolm, in countries that are “technophilic, pluralistic, educated, where women have rights.”
Actually, that’s a lot of factors. Pronatalists view tolerance, education, and women’s rights as obstacles to their goals. The latter includes access to contraceptives, which has been one of the biggest reasons for the declining rate of fertility around the world.
According to Population Connection, women’s rights are a particular source of concern for folks fretting that women aren’t cranking out enough children. They’ve tried bribing women through “birth bonuses” without much success. Now, authoritarian governments are doing it the old-fashioned way: They’re taking away women’s rights and access to education.
This isn’t restricted to the Taliban or North Korea. Right here in the U.S., Republican lawmakers are making a connection between lower birth rates and the so-called Great Replacement conspiracy theory and using it as justification for restricting abortions.
“Our state population has not grown except by those foreigners who have moved here or refugees who have been placed here,” Nebraska state Sen. Steve Erdman said during a debate. “Why is that? It’s because we’ve killed 200,000 people. These are people we’ve killed.”
This feeds into the Republican desire to limit access to abortion and contraceptives. It’s why Donald Trump was on television a week ago saying, “We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly.”
While the pronatalist movement includes groups like the “Quiverfull” movement of fundamentalist Christians who insist that large families are a sign of God’s blessing, many of the tech billionaires involved don’t have any religious foundation for their claims. But no matter their background, pronatalists share a mythology that says there’s nothing to worry about, that a rising population is an inherent good, and that more people in each generation are necessary to sustain civilization.
Simone Collins, wife of Malcolm, is certainly doing her share. She’s running as a Republican for a position in Pennsylvania state government, operating the couple’s pronatalist charity, and producing a new child every 18 months—the fastest she can heal between C-sections, according to The Guardian. She doesn’t believe in maternity leave, but does believe in child care. Her children Octavian George, Torsten Savage, and Titan Invictus get that care from the couple who live next door rent-free, in a home owned by the Collinses, in exchange for dealing with the Collins kids. Simone is expecting a fourth, to be named Industry Americus, any day. The names, like everything else about their children, were selected through data analysis.
While improvements in agriculture may have largely held off predicted waves of famine, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will continue to do so, and the rising number of people comes with an incredible price for the rest of life on Earth.
Even if that disaster doesn’t occur soon, it doesn’t require waiting decades to see whether concerns about pronatalists are real. If pronatalists believe countries that are “pluralistic, educated, [and] where women have rights” are the problem, then what’s the solution? White nationalism, ignorance, and restricting the rights of women.
That’s a program that sounds all too familiar.
We’re heading across the pond for this week’s episode of “The Downballot” after the UK just announced it would hold snap elections—on July 4, no less. Co-host David Beard gives us Yanks a full run-down, including how the elections will work, what the polls are predicting, and what Labour plans to do if it finally ends 14 years of Conservative rule. We also take detours into Scotland and Rwanda (believe it or not) and bear down on a small far-right party that could cost the Tories dearly.
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