Utterly, demonstrably untrue. A greater population means more scientists making discoveries, more engineers perfecting new technology, more authors and artists creating new works, more of everything in fact. Basic economics tells us it also means greater specialization and economies of scale, more efficiency, and a higher standard of living for all.
Ahh yes, the ole "endless growth" idea. That because our recent past has a period of tremendous growth that it means our future will continue that way. There are plenty of signals that this isn't the case. A decrease in patents per capita is one of them. The first world has also seen a large growth in jobs requiring education while also seeing a large drop in manual labor jobs as those are replaced by automation or exported to low income countries. Initially they were replaced by "service" jobs but that economic engine started running out of steam years ago and was accelerated due to covid. In the 90s there was a strong push to educate everyone to college level but we didn't see near the growth in college level jobs to accompany the newly degreed. To put it in simple terms, the largest richest companies in the 21st century require only a handful of human employees while the largest richest companies of the 20th century employed legions of humans. The more efficient we are and the more of us there are the less valuable each hour of human labor becomes. This doesn't work very well with our current global economic system. This issue alone is going to cause more and more global unrest as the century continues.
Do you think it's an accident that mankind's scientific and technological progress exploded at the same time its population did? Or do you believe it's coincidental that all isolated human populations remain primitive? Advanced, complex economies cannot exist without a large population. The larger the population, the better off everyone is.
This is backwards. Unless your implying that if only humanity had managed to have more babies or not die as often 2000 years ago we would be much more advanced by now? No, our population exploded when we discovered how to convert fossil fuels into energy so we could produce food for everyone with only a handful of farmers, freeing up the rest of us to do other things. And the other major factor was modern medicine. We vastly reduced infant mortality and significantly increased the percentage of us making it to our 70s and 80s (or more importantly, the number of us making it out of childhood).
Also, thanks to technology, geography doesn't isolate like it used too. The modern world doesn't require ultra dense cities like it did in the 19th and 20th century.
What exactly do you believe we'll run out of in a future world with triple our population? Water? There's exactly as much water today as there was on earth a year ago, or a hundred or even a million years ago. Food? We're far better fed today than ever before. Energy? We consume only in infinitesimal fraction of the solar energy that strikes the earth, and nuclear power alone would fill our energy needs for millions of years. Metals? We haven't even used a millionth of a billionth of one percent of the metals in the earth's crust alone, not to mention what we might mine from space itself. Rare earths? The same argument applies. For any resource you mention, we have either a near-unlimited supply, or an alternative that will serve equally well. As for pollution, our air and water are much cleaner today than they were even 30 years ago ... and far cleaner than those in the primitive, low-population societies of certain 3rd-world nations.
Solar: we often already produce more than we can use in some areas because its not constant supply so we install gas plants to offset solar during the night. Gravity storage requires far too much geographic space to be realistic and battery backup will require collassal project scales with its own pollution issues.
Nuclear: this is a holy grail if we weren't so stupid as a species. All the waste produced by US nuclear power since its inception can fit in a single football field 9 meters high. And thats after producing near 30% of the USAs power for the past what, 50 years? Yet we are still using technology dating back from the 60s and we have barely pushed the needle foward on what should already be our primary national power source. But it scares the sheep and they bleat loudly.
Pollution: your right. *our* air and water are cleaner (if you live in the USA). We and the rest of the 1st world have exported our pollution producing factories, mining and refining to 3rd world nations. Unfortunately we still need all of those things, and more of them the more of us there are.
More people has put a *huge* strain on our wild places globally. I personally can see a difference in many national parks, beaches and reefs just between the 90s and now. Red River Gorge national forest near me has gone from a locals climbing destination and hangout to a international destination, and now the place looks like a parking lot and amusement park most weekends. And that's in just 20 years. There have been a number of scientific papers on the subject, and it stems from the swiftly growing population of global middle class and the low cost of international travel.
These problems will all continue to accelerate even if population growth stopped tomorrow, simply as a side effect of the current world populations increasing wealth and access to "middle class" activities.
Clearly malthusian level population genocide isn't the answer, but neither is then idea that somehow we can become many tens or hundreds of times more efficient than we are now while also doubling or tripling our numbers. You also seem to be casually glossing over the tremendous negative effects our massive population growth have already created.
You seem to repeatedly go with the idea that if some is good, more must be better, ad infinitum. I don't believe the evidence demands that technological advancement is dependent on massive population growth
Humanity will continue to grow, but we can't do it here. If we want to continue growing at a billion every 10-15 years we are going to need to focus on getting us off this planet.
