Just when demographers are ringing alarm bells about overpopulation, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says we need to populate our solar system. Mr Bezos was asked for his thoughts on humanity living in outer space in a thousand years’ time. He replied: “I would love to see, you know, a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have at any given time 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins.…Space would be full of life and intelligence and energy.” He added that he wants to help “build heavy infrastructure that will be used by the space entrepreneurs of future generations…so that ingenuity and imagination can really be unleashed”.
Mr Bezos’ thoughts are echoed by fellow multi-billionaire Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly known as Twitter). In 2021, he said of the human race: “We don’t want to be one of those single-planet species; we want to be a multi-planet species.” Earlier this year, Mr Musk warned that: “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming…mark these words.” Mr Bezos conceives of people living in giant space stations. He said most inhabitants of these would visit Earth for vacations. He envisions our planet returning to its pristine environment, as factories would be built in space. He said they would exploit resources on the moon or on asteroids instead of using up Earth’s.
demographer noun an expert in the study of statistics relating to the changing structure of human populations.
ingenuity noun the quality of being clever,
conceives verb
- become pregnant with (a child). e.g “she was conceived when her father was 49”
- form or devise (a plan or idea) in the mind. e.g “the dam project was originally conceived in 1977” Similar: think up, think of, come up with, dream up, draw up, devise
envisions verb = conceives
pristine adjective new or almost new, and in very good condition:
e.g pristine new offices
e.g Washing machine for sale – only two months old and in pristine condition.