I agree... its absurd to continually just grow grow grow without looking back to see if we're losing what makes us humans in the process.

We're getting so stuffed in the USA that national parks are starting to limit visitors and close gates at capacity - that for me alone is signal that a) we should take a serious look at our population b) we should do more to preserve and open more public lands for this growing population.

I suspect national park attendance: https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/SSRSReports/Park%20Specific%20Rep...

has grown much faster than population, due to heavy advertising by national parks and a general increased awareness of visiting national parks as a "thing to do" on vacation rather than e.g. going to Disney Land.

And National Parks are an incredibly popular destination for foreign visitors https://www.ustravel.org/press/study-more-overseas-visitors-...

> I do still think it's worthwhile for us to have the conversation about growth rate regardless of what we could handle in the long run.

Of course, good to point out. I would call this a scientific discussion. Not that we necessarily only need to have this conversation on scientific conferences and the like but keeping it scientific as much as possible is the extent to which such a discussion is useful, in my opinion.