Ok, lets turn this around. Can you imagine any situation, no matter how unlikely, where humanity should stop increasing their numbers or do you think we should keep increasing the population no matter what ?

I'm beginning to fear that for the vast majority of humans the urge to procreate is ingrained at such a fundamental level that no amount of rational thought can overcome it. Like the 3 laws of robotics that cannot be overruled, humans seems to have a rule that 'thou shall increase thy numbers'. We could grow until the planet is covered in 100 story skyscrapers where everyone lives like in a Japanese capsule hotel and there would still be people insisting that we grow the population.

Frankly, I think we as a species are fucked.

Beautifully put.

I think we are headed in the right direction though. The rate of growth plateaus in very developed nations, so we might just survive the current craziness.

Sure, but our environment might not.

If anything, our environment is more likely to survive than our species.

People stop breeding when they're prosperous enough to be comfortable and educated enough to defer gratification.

The correlation is well-known and widely documented. Native - i.e. non-immigrant - populations in the US and Europe are both shrinking now, sometimes dramatically.

> People stop breeding when they're prosperous enough to be comfortable and educated enough to defer gratification.

And when is that going to be something that's true for the entire global population ? It would require us to get rid of some massive issues regarding inequality and that is never going to happen.

This does ring true, but I can't think of any reliable sources backing that up. I'd appreciate it if you mentioned some.