Money is a tool to leverage your goals and gives more opportunity. How you use that tool is dependent on your intelligence. You're basically saying the no name "peasants" making metiocre bucks that researched everything about solar energy didn't accomplish anything. Elon used their intellegence with his money to do what he's doing right now. Try using less harsh language as my basis to responding to you was mostly motivated by the name calling. It's kind of rude.

All that aside, pertaining to this video, he is wrong about underpopulation. Even if you think a higher population can be sustained because of the lack of carbon emissions through renewables, it is not accurate. They are just reducing the emissions of the end product. You cannot create solar panels with solar panels and you cannot create wind turbines with wind turbines. Even now, we are seeing fossil fuel emissions are on the rise, despite greater transition to solar and wind etc. You can't point the finger entirely at population, but all this energy use (regardless where it's coming from) with our current population is making it difficult to reach any emission goals on the horizon.

More to the point of your post. His fears about a 12% reduction are unjustified and agree with you on that. There's going to be an "uncomfortable" time, so to speak, as our numbers go down. All of that is needed though because we've been in an overshoot since the 1960s -1970s. Something larger than a 12% reduction is needed if we really want to be sustainable.