I think this is the crux of the issue.

Many folks pine for yesterday, but honestly until/unless we all embrace (and stop demonizing) birth control and increase the meaningfulness of lives worldwide, there will continue to be massive ecological damage just from people, leave alone industry.

You have that backwards. Pretty much everything else is a symptom of overpopulation, which is the root problem.

No matter how green and efficient we are, if the population keeps growing it won't really matter.

But the population doesn't grow much where standards of living are high. People have lots of kids in poor areas because their survival rates are relatively low, and need them for labor. As conditions improve, birth rates lower.

The argument is that when people have better living conditions, they have less babies. Namely, babies will survive so two people will only have one child.

But living conditions have drastically improved over recent decades for 90% of the population. What makes you think things have peaked now?

Also, capitalism would greatly benefit from improved economic conditions around the world.

>You really think you can improve the living standards for 90%+ of the world population?

Yes? Why would that not be possible?

If you're referring to the 2016 ILO report[0][1], that was a short-term trend partially attributable to the refugee influx. Overall, global poverty has been on a steep downward trend for decades.

[0] http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcom...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/19/poverty-increasing-in-develo...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty