There are now 8 billion+ people on earth... 100 years ago there were 2 billion... We are not running out of humans. We are on the other hand, running out of resources.
There are a few different stories that indicate China’s population is not only not replacing itself, but that the 1 Billion plus number is actually more like 800 Million and the government is just too scared to admit it.
“We are... running out of resources.”
Be specific. Peak oil? Peak food? Peak solar energy? Peak nuclear? Peak oxygen?
I don’t see evidence for anything essential running out.
Sure, artificial scarcity is real and far too common. We can have famine, locally or worldwide. We can contaminate all of Earth’s water. But is this inevitable? Is it more likely with a growing population? Or, does a growing population feed innovation faster than the use of the resources required to sustain it?
I think if we had focussed on the conservation of “limited” resources and intentionally reduced the population, we would not have experienced the technological advances that a growing population produces as the result of the wealth-creating increases in resource utilization (for work), productivity (as work) and innovation (as increased work efficiency).
The wealth of the world has steadily increased as we’ve put resources to work for us, and we seem to be approaching exponential growth (i.e. a vertical trajectory) of wealth (and accompanying resource allocation and utilization) per capita. In other words, even the poor today have access to things that even kings could not imagine a short while ago. And the coming generation could potentially enjoy the most massive wealth in history...
That is if we don’t destroy ourselves first. But I think self-destruction is far more likely to come as the result of depopulating forces such as war, disease, and hair-brained schemes to “save humanity”. This includes conservation based on a scarcity mindset or apocalyptic prophecies of the Green religion.