In a recent speech given in Japan published in
Raelpress.org on May 9, 2011, Rael commented on the Fukushima problem, saying that the Japanese government indeed made a mistake by building a plant so close to the ocean with such vulnerability to tsunamis, but he also said the Japanese government didn’t have much choice since it has 120 million citizens expecting power. He explained:
"
The problem facing humanity is that we need too much electricity because we have too many people on Earth; it is overpopulated. With our present technology, Earth shouldn’t have more than 3 billion people. But we now have more than twice that number. Right now, almost all of the world’s governments are criminals, not because they create nuclear plants, but because they keep pushing people to have more children – and those additional want to have more electricity and hence more facilities like Fukushima. The Fukushima crisis is a result of overpopulation!”
When Rael published his first book in 1974, the world population was about 3.5 billion. Today, the world's population is almost double at 7 billion. However, in 1974, the population of Japan was about 110 million compared to today's almost 130 million people... that's only a 18% increase compared to the 100% in total world population. It seems that Rael has no clue about Japan's demographics and so erroneously picked Japan as an example of overpopulation. In contrast, the world's most populated areas with increasing growth-rates are simply are too poor to have any nuclear power plants.
According to Rael, if there were only 60 million people in Japan, there would be no need for risky plants like Fukushima. According to the
Statistics Bureau of Japan, the population of Japan was 60 million back in 1926! It was already about 110 million in 1974. Is Rael suggesting that Japan actually adopt a one-child policy?
