I suppose if there’s a more equitable share of global wealth we should expect to see population come down eventually, but not sure I could get behind any measures that seek to socially engineer low birth rates which, aside from the morality of it, would lead us into demographic crisis as China is beginning to experience.

The issue of water and food is basically a matter of economic distribution, as IMO there’s more than enough resources to sustain 8bn+ people on the planet. Consider the amount of food that gets thrown away, for example, or wasteful water-intense agriculture geared toward export markets in the west, or that bitcoin mining is using potentially hundreds of billions of gallons of water per year…i could go on. To summarize, I don’t think the key issue is population. Would the world be a better place with 4bn people? Probably. But blaming our environmental problems on the fact that non-developed countries have booming populations could lead to some dark places…(not that I think you’re thinking is anyway inclined toward that)

I agree, conversation is good, and thanks for reading my article!