Dont worry, we are living in a time where there are the most humans that will ever exist. the global population is not reproducing at a rate fast enough to sustain its current numbers anyway. certainly this is the case in the west.You cite many data points in your post, and none of them are wrong. However, you miss the bigger picture:
First of all, there is almost nothing in our current "Western lifestyles" that is sustainable. That photo you pasted above could just as easily be a photo of a tractor on its way to extract the minerals that went into your smartphone or computer. Or, it could be mining the gold that's in your wedding ring. Hell, it could even be digging up the metals that will eventually go into our Emiras! Or, it could be generating the plastic that goes into an artificial limb.
Point being: it doesn't matter what the end result is, whether it's a bomb or a new kitchen sink; the end result is fundamentally unsustainable.
And I agree with you that humanity seriously needs to "pump the brakes" on all of this expansion, in order to buy us more time to figure out all of the bugs of our modern civilization. And believe me, there are MANY bugs:
I argue that the ONLY way to achieve this is to immediately reduce our human population across the board — through completely voluntary, non-violent, and ethical methods, of course! (I've had this discussion enough times by now to know how people tend to interpret such a statement without that disclaimer ) We're in the "everything crisis", and we won't make it out alive just by switching to paper straws.
- Destruction of wildlife and biodiversity
- Microplastics leaching out into every part of the globe
- Factory farming and degradation of topsoils
- Global warming, increased wildfires, and rising sea levels
- etc.
However, if people don't like the above suggestion, then here's an alternative: immediately cut your energy use by 90%, take no more than one flight every 3 years, and live in a 640 sq.ft. home. But of course, nobody's going to do that. We all want someone else to fix all of our problems without any impact on our lifestyles.
And so, if people don't like THAT answer, then here's one last alternative: human civilization will collapse.
so im sure the problem will be short lived!!