>I think there is an unspoken part to "reduce consumption", "without decreasing the comfort of living". Decreasing individuals' buying power is about as good a solution to consumption as "don't give people enough food to feed their kids" is to overpopulation.

Attaching a fantasy requirement to real world constraints serves no purpose.

Reducing population does attain the goal of reducing consumption. Reducing people’s ability to take honeymoons to Tahiti reduces consumption. Reducing people’s ability to drive large vehicles to take the kids to school and go shopping for groceries reduces consumption. Reducing people’s ability to live far away from everything, which in turn reduces the amount of energy needed to push all the mass around needed to live far away from everything also reduces consumption.

There is no free lunch.

> I'm convinced, though, that phones and notebooks are expensive and "modular" enough that repairs with proper replacement part availability would be cost-effective.

Are they modular? As far as I understand, everything is getting more and more integrated. Also, compared to the cost of buying new, the cost of labor to fix my MacBook Air or iPhone is far too high where I live. Perhaps if taxes were sufficiently high to make a new laptop or phone more costly to purchase to offset the pollution, then it would make sense.