>Many environmentalists say that even the current world population can't afford Western middle-class quality of life.
What makes you think we (we as in those of us who see reduction as a focus on environmentalism) disagree with this? We are, indeed, already too many, meaning that we should reduce further, and further, and not just be content with our current numbers, and certainly not allow those numbers to keep growing.
The city I was born in, Montpellier, grew from 100k inhabitants in 1960 to 270k in 2018. It turned from beautiful Haussmann style architecture surrounded by crops of vines and wild countryside land to a nightmare of concrete towers, oppressive modern architecture ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Pierres_... can you look at this and not feel overly disgusted?), overgrowth of suburbs around it to the point where we need to travel much further to see any wildland and a homeless problem ala san francisco that keeps getting worse and worse as we fail to build as much as necessary to fulfill the need of our constant growth and and rents and property costs keep growing beyond more and more out of reach of the average french man living there.
It is not just about CO2 emissions like what people on the left side focus on so much. It is about quality of life itself. Or lack thereof induced by letting things go on like this.
You are right, current numbers are horrendous and more than the earth could withstand if everyone had western middle class style economy, as even western countries have too much population. It isn't solely poor countries that should reduce their numbers. Encouraging people to sterilize in France would be a great thing too.
What makes you think we (we as in those of us who see reduction as a focus on environmentalism) disagree with this? We are, indeed, already too many, meaning that we should reduce further, and further, and not just be content with our current numbers, and certainly not allow those numbers to keep growing.
The city I was born in, Montpellier, grew from 100k inhabitants in 1960 to 270k in 2018. It turned from beautiful Haussmann style architecture surrounded by crops of vines and wild countryside land to a nightmare of concrete towers, oppressive modern architecture ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Pierres_... can you look at this and not feel overly disgusted?), overgrowth of suburbs around it to the point where we need to travel much further to see any wildland and a homeless problem ala san francisco that keeps getting worse and worse as we fail to build as much as necessary to fulfill the need of our constant growth and and rents and property costs keep growing beyond more and more out of reach of the average french man living there.
It is not just about CO2 emissions like what people on the left side focus on so much. It is about quality of life itself. Or lack thereof induced by letting things go on like this.
You are right, current numbers are horrendous and more than the earth could withstand if everyone had western middle class style economy, as even western countries have too much population. It isn't solely poor countries that should reduce their numbers. Encouraging people to sterilize in France would be a great thing too.