The planet earth has to have a maximum carrying capacity of humans. Is it 10 billion? 100 billion? 500 billion? 1 trillion?
If we can agree on that, then the questions become 1) what is the ultimate number, 2) when will it occur, and 3) what do we do about it?
The population reduction freaks are free to commit suicide at any time. Could even murder suicide their families.
Search YouTube for “Population Collapse” and “Peter Zeihan” and you will see that those in the know are now more worried about the population leveling off and then collapsing more than about there ever being too many people on the Earth.
Demographic trends show a definite tendency toward slowing of population growth, leading to reduction in global population. As people get more prosperous, they have fewer babies. While advances in medicine and food production led to an decrease in infant mortality and an increase in lifespan, in the longer term, lower infant mortality means that people don’t need to have 10 kids to make sure a few of them survive. In developing countries, children are your social safety net. They’re your retirement plan. When you don’t need to pump out an army of children, you don’t do so anymore. There’s no need to panic over population increase. What we do need to worry about however, is an aging global population, without so many young people to support old farts.
It’s not that simple. To what living and health standards and level of freedom? At what environmental cost?
We had 3 billion at much lower standards of living in the 60s and the dire threats were combined with the “ZPG” movement of the time.