The parent didn't say population growth, they said population. There's way more people currently alive on Earth than the planet's carrying capacity under 1600-level tech, to which we'd had to backtrack globally if we wanted to fix the climate crisis through reducing consumption alone. This is unacceptable for pretty much every reason.
We either find technological solutions to this problem - both on the emission end and on the sequestration end - or climate change starts killing people (and making more people kill even more people). It's that simple.
Population growth is slowing itself. So we have that covered. And now what? Turns out, it's not enough, not even before considering that 2/3 of this population is still in developing countries, which are going to increase their emission levels in the pursuit of decent quality of life.
And thus population control is critical... QED. We don't have that covered at all at the moment: We are already 7 billions and will possibly be 11+ billions by the end of the century. That's insane.
Let's not forget that emissions are only a tiny part of the pressure we put on the environment.
Unless you plan on killing the top 90% GHG emitters over the next fifteen years or so, reducing population levels is not an option. Slowing population growth is important, but it's not a solution.
One of the problems we have is people not being able to take a long term view. Everything has always to work within 5 years... Result: nothing is done.
What I wrote should have started at least 30 years ago. As the saying goes, the next best time to start is now.
You're right but in my opinion, we'll either figure out how to live carbon neutral more or less regardless how many people we have in the next two decades, or catastrophic climate change will ensure that the projected population rise will never happen.
Luckily, we don't have to go back to 1600-level tech, even if our energy output falls to 1/2 of what it currently is.
Vaccines, and reducing child-mortality (and other health care), for example, are not inherently energy-intensive. Neither is massive computing power and storage (data centers are ripe for being carbon-neutral).
What might happen is that we'll have 1 farmer supporting 100 people, instead of 1000, so we'll end up having a larger agricultural population, but not as large as at the end of 19th century. Consumption WILL go down whether you like it or not, even though you might find it politically unpalatable at this point in time.
This might have the additional benefit of slowing down population growth even more, resulting in sustainable levels. It might also result in a healthier population as we embrace reduced consumption and maybe slightly more physical labor.
> Vaccines, and reducing child-mortality (and other health care), for example, are not inherently energy-intensive. Neither is massive computing power and storage (data centers are ripe for being carbon-neutral).
They may not be that emission-dependent in principle, but their supply chains might. Remember that for any technology we want to keep through changes, we also need to keep its entire supply chain in some form - from raw material through all specialized processing steps, plus populations and transportation required. These may not be so easy to decarbonize, though I do have high hopes, especially if and when electric vehicles finally take over.
> This might have the additional benefit of slowing down population growth even more, resulting in sustainable levels.
Or it may have the exactly opposite effect - accelerating population growth. So far the only thing that seems to solidly correlate with population growth is the development level, and that correlation is negative. I.e. as countries become wealthier and consume more, their population growth rates decrease.
We either find technological solutions to this problem - both on the emission end and on the sequestration end - or climate change starts killing people (and making more people kill even more people). It's that simple.