Even if there were an event that wiped out 75% of people, it kicks the can down the road at most 30 years due to a baby boom.
Refusing to solve the real problem is what got us in to this mess.
It’s also utterly like us as a species to think that killing 3 out of 4 people is an easier fix than just living within our means.
Individuals aren't really responsible for the mass amounts of pollutants put into the atmosphere the same way corporations are. In order for the human population to "live within it's means" at an impactful scale it would require a change of capitalist philosophy that quite obviously isn't going to change anytime soon.
Kicking the can down the road 30 years is by far the best option we have available to us at this point (not that it will happen in my lifetime).
Capitalism won’t go without a fight.
Yes.
Absolutely the scale of the problem is unprecedented though, but that message hasn’t changed in 50 years.
We live in a world of finite resources. If we, as a species, overpopulate to the point where these finite resources run dry, what are the best options?
Climate change is a problem that makes us need a rapid solution right now even if its costly and painful, general depletion of resources really isn't; if it wasn't for climate change then we could just let the replacement of oil to renewables happen "naturally" as oil prices slowly increase as the supply decreases, the usual market incentives would be enough to manage the resource allocation.
Finiteness of resources is not as big of an issue as it looked in 1970s (when the original Limits to Growth study was made) - with a stable or shrinking population (current situation in developed world, soon-to-arrive globally) each person's share of physical resources is the same all the while as each person's need for physical resources (except energy) is not growing now (unlike 1970s), with advances in tech meeting the same needs now requires less resources so we can continue to grow our economy within the limits of the same finite resources.
We live in a society where everything is disposable, and that has a huge energy cost that we don't factor in because energy is so cheap right now. When energy is more expensive, repairing, conserving, and reusing a thing will be a better choice instead of throwing it out and buying a new one.