EDITOR’S NOTE: This editorial was updated at 8:50 a.m. Monday, April 11, in response to Elon Musk’s announcement he would not accept a position on Twitter’s board of directors. The announcement came after The Gazette’s deadline.

Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, visited the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs last week to encourage problem-solving innovation.

It is hard to imagine a better role model for cadets and other students during this era of institutionalized hostility toward human life. Academicians bombard K-12 and college students with messages of humanity’s intractable racism. Educators proselytize young minds to believe western society mostly foments inequality and suffering. Children and young adults learn their mere existence and routine activities intensify planet-destroying climate change.

As the above philosophy increasingly invades modern education, we wonder why youthful trends include record-setting suicide rates, deadly addictions, low workforce participation, and popular artistic expressions that celebrate death and anxiety more than ambition, joy and relationships.

Musk is the father of eight children. He is flawed, like every individual. Yet, he exudes enthusiasm for life and the possibilities of a single heart and mind. He’s the world’s richest man because he never fears to dream of what others call pie-in-the-sky. He dreams, plans, acts and occasionally succeeds.

By pursuing dreams, Musk gave humanity self-driving cars that run on fossil fuels, sun and wind converted to voltage. He privatized space travel, which will mature to benefit all of humanity in ways limited only by the imagination. His dozens of pursuits became the impetus for Compaq, PayPal, eBay and more. He donates solar-powered energy systems to power disaster areas – just one of his efforts to ease human suffering.

Just this year, Musk embarked upon making himself Twitter’s largest shareholder. This bought him an invitation to serve on the company’s board. He turned it down Saturday, igniting speculation he wants to buy more shares than the government allows board members to own. By gaining control of Twitter, he hopes to end Big Social Media’s disgusting censorship threats to freedom and democracy.

Musk has a message largely ignored by the media. It is possibly more important than his inventions and aspirations, the jobs he creates and the mouths he feeds. Musk understands what few celebrities see in a society apologizing for human activities.

“There are not enough people,” Musk told The Wall Street Journal in December. “I can’t emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.”

The problems posed by academe’s desire for plummeting fertility rates should seem obvious. Young people support old people, by funding social programs and providing goods, services and commodities. A small population of working-aged people cannot support a far larger population of elders. Musk said rapidly declining fertility rates around the globe – caused by abortion, contraception, and other means of avoiding reproduction – are “one of the biggest risks to civilization.”

CNBC noted that Musk’s statement “comes as a growing number of people are deciding not to have children, citing concerns such as climate change and inequality.”

Few things promote “inequality” more than policies designed to reduce reproduction. The United States and other wealthy countries inundate poor regions with contraceptives. Authors of Colorado’s new anything-goes abortion law emphasized, in the bill, the importance of abortions to ease “socioeconomic disparities disproportionately faced by people of color and people with low incomes.” That’s a polite way for comfortable white people to say minorities and the poor should not reproduce.

After Texas passed a bill forbidding convenience abortions, Musk refused to comment. That’s a far cry from most celebrities, who rush to publicly oppose any restrictions on abortion at any stage of pregnancy. Reporters asked Musk about the law because he moved last year from California to Texas.

“Elon consistently tells me that he likes the social policies in the state of Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbot, R-Texas, told MSNBC.

All long-term data show world hunger and poverty reliably declined as the world’s population increased throughout the 20th century and early 21st. United Nations data show a 15% reduction in malnutrition between 2004 and 2015, as world population grew. The rate of children ages five and under who suffer “stunting” from malnutrition fell from 33% in 2000 to 21.9% in 2029.

Despite the fully disproven anti-growth Malthusian theories of the mid-20th Century, our self-appointed experts tell students they are blights on the planet who harm the less fortunate. Because Musk studies data and science, he knows the opposite is true.

There’s a reason Musk and other innovators and inventors amass great fortunes to invest and reinvest. Their efforts to solve problems typically make the world better for the rich, the poor, and the planet we live on. The world rewards them with money, which they use to solve more problems.

Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board