I think the problem comes to 'return to. Your method sounds rather violent.

We can do it gradually or nature will do it violently.

Every species needs population control. If we want air conditioning, commercial jets, and bottled water, then we need to get global population under a billion people.

The #1 method of population reduction is to increase education and opportunity for girls and women in developing countries.

>We can do it gradually

Good news, we already are. Most countries now are below population replacement level. Many countries like Japan are near panic because the population is going to drop very quickly in the next 20 to 40 years.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme that feeds on population growth, but dealing with a shrinking population once is better than dealing with a large population forever.

Fortunately it becomes easier to reach that goal if you eat less red meat because most crops are grown as animal feed to produce meat.