Having continuous population growth leads to continuous economic growth. But...

1. You can also achieve that by squeezing more economic productivity out of fewer people, by continuously improving education, diversity of thought, legally protecting creativity, fostering small businesses through seed money and tax incentives, and lots of other stuff.

2. We have already been scaling the amount of productivity that comes out of a population since the invention of the steam engine and the factory line. Digital automation, AI and robotics are expected to keep that trend going for a long time.

3. Not to mention, that it's easier now to operate productively in areas of less dense population. Previously small towns would die, but with clever infrastructure that supports broadband everywhere, public transportation, self-driving vehicles, drone delivery, additive manufacturing (3d printing), virtual presence through XR, and so on, you can operate a rural population like a big productive city, and get the benefits of both.

4. And at the end of the day, if your economy doesn't grow, it just means that wealth in the country doesn't grow.You can maintain that indefinitely. Or if an economy shrinks, society doesn't come collapsing down until everyone gets poor enough that bribery and corruption overcome lawfulness. But if the society was already wealthy, that will take a long time, and you can mitigate it by doing things like spreading out concentrations of wealth among the population (taxing the rich), increasing immigration, and adopting socioeconomic sustainability planning approaches.

Not necessarily. Also this is already happening in many countries, and they don't collapse into ruin. They just stagnate for a few generations.

It doesn't necessarily reduce population density though, because often what happens is that young people leave small towns and villages that have fewer opportunities and move to the big city, causing those little towns to die. That's usually bad for maintaining cultural and linguistic diversity across a country's landscape, but good for biodiversity, because as people go, the environment recovers.

Also as population declines, land and resources tend to consolidate more and more into the hands of fewer oligarchs. But the oligarchs all own us already anyway, so NBD.

IIRC one of many covid conspiracy theories is the chinese government intentionally release or allow covid to spread to reduce those older generations given how covid disproportionately kills old people.

Just have to think further out.

Are you saying that offspring are most valued as an early retirement?

Thanks for the links. Interesting reads.

Tldr, oxfam:

Around 50% of these emissions meanwhile can be attributed to the richest 10% of people around the world, who have average carbon footprints 11 times as high as the poorest half of the population.

Hard to swallow pill: The way of life of the rich countries, including the one of their poor citizens, is the problem. We, the westerners, are the problem, not the billions of China and India.

But yay electric cars and recycling... Insert "I'm doing my part" meme.

This isn't necessarily about the sheer size of population, and has more to do with birth rates, but this Kurzgesagt video also outlines well the need for a higher birth rate.

They are both coefficients of the same term in the equation. Resource use per population times total population. Reduce either number and the total burden on the system goes down.

I disagree, it's about money. Or more accurately perception, the next generation traditionally had it better than the one before until now. The current generation is unable to provide their children a better life than they had so having children is less appealing.

Because a huge chunk of people could have salary raises and homes and be upper class and still now want to have kids.

Or the disappearance of this class has led to lower birth rates.

No, it's 100% economics. Why do you think that having "careers, lives and travel" (as if having a family is not having a life?) is more appealing to modern first worlders? Because it doesn't impact their finances severely. Having more children in impoverished countries is a financial gain because children are free labor and lottery tickets to get the entire family out of poverty. In wealthy countries, children are only a financial loss.