Myth Vs Facts: Why Elon Musk Is Wrong About Human Extinction

In the viral 30 November 2025 episode of “People by WTF”, Elon Musk looked straight at Nikhil Kamath — who admitted he has no children — and said:“Well… maybe you should. You won’t regret it.”He then doubled

down on his long-standing warning: “If the trend continues, we disappear.”“Fewer humans means less consciousness… A larger human population will have increased consciousness. We’re more likely to understand the nature of the universe if we have a lot more people than if we have fewer.”These are not off-the-cuff remarks. Musk has been repeating almost identical lines since 2017. With the podcast now past 15 million views, it’s worth putting his claims against the most recent, authoritative data available in late 2025.Here is the unfiltered picture 1. Current Global Fertility & Population Snapshot (Source: United Nations World Population Prospects 2024 – Revision July 2024)

• Global Total Fertility Rate (average children per woman, 2022–2025): 2.25
• Replacement-level fertility (needed for zero growth without migration): 2.1
• World population mid-2024: 8.12 billion→ We are still above replacement level globally.

2. When and At What Level Will the World Peak? (Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024 – Medium-variant projection, still the consensus scenario in late 2025)

• Expected global peak: mid-2080s at 10.3 billion
• Population in 2054: 9.74 billion
• Population in 2100: 10.2 billion (slightly below the peak)→ After the peak, the population plateaus near 10 billion — it does not crash.

Even the UN’s pessimistic low-variant scenario only reaches 9.0 billion in 2100 — still 900 million more than today.3. Where the Actual Declines Are Happening (Source: United Nations World Population Prospects 2024)

• Sub-Saharan Africa 2022–2050: population +87% (from 1.2 billion to almost 2.1 billion)
• India 2022–2050: +9% (+252 million people)
• China 2022–2050: –23% (–310 million people)
• Europe 2022–2050: –9%
• East Asia overall: –26%

The global total keeps rising for another six decades because growth in Africa and around Africa outweighs shrinkage in Europe and East Asia.4. How Fast Could a Hypothetical Long-Term Decline Be? (Source: UN technical annex to World Population Prospects 2024 – constant-fertility experiment)If global fertility instantly froze forever at the projected 2100 level of 1.84 children per woman:

• Year 2100 → 10.4 billion
• Year 2500 → 1.97 billion
• Year 3000 → 227 million

→ That is a slow decline over almost 1,000 years — not a “collapse”.5. Innovation vs Raw Population Size (Source: Global Innovation Index 2024–2025, Cornell University/INSEAD/WIPO)Top 10 most innovative nations and their 2025 populations:

• Switzerland → 8.9 million
• Sweden → 10.6 million
• United States → 345 million
• Singapore → 6.0 million
• South Korea → 51 million
• Netherlands → 18 million
• Denmark → 5.9 million
• Finland → 5.6 million
• Germany → 84 million
• Israel → 10 million

Average population of the top 10: only ~60 million. Innovation correlates with education spending, institutional quality, and R&D investment — not headcount.6. Environmental Footprint Reality (Source: Global Footprint Network Living Planet Report 2025 & UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2025)

• Humanity currently consumes resources at 1.75 Earths per year.
• Population growth accounted for 35–40 % of the rise in CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels between 2010 and 2019 (IPCC AR6, confirmed in 2025 updates).

7. What Leading Demographers Actually Say in 2024–2025

• Patrick Gerland, Chief, UN Population Division (July 2024 launch of WPP 2024):“We do not foresee a global population collapse this century. The world population is projected to peak in the mid-2080s and then stabilise near 10 billion.”
• Tomas Sobotka, Vienna Institute of Demography (2025 statement):“Calling the projected gentle decline after 2080 a ‘collapse’ is probably too dramatic.”

Elon Musk’s personal choice to have many children is his own, but the demographic evidence does not support describing the current fertility trend as an existential threat to civilisation.