People have been addressing it for a long time, it's called family planning, look it up.

We are addressing that. Human population is predicted to plateau in 2080 and begin to decline after that:

https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

> The real problem, and the real elephant that no one wants to address, is the human population size.

Usually nobody engages this because it's a boring conservative talking point. Do I consume too much? No, it's the world that's overpopulated. And they usually have drastic authoritarian solutions that have no chance of being enacted. But go ahead, you have the floor, what are your proposals?

As a special case it's worth noting that some 20 European countries are experiencing depopulation at a rate of around 10-20%. Countries with a significant welfare & national pension system cannot survive long term depopulation if there are not enough taxes coming in to pay for it.

Almost every single one of those countries are in eastern europe, definitely not countries with "significant welfare & national pension system". The depopulation is also mainly due to migration, not fertility.

Great, let’s start with the highest fertility countries!

Well, might want to look those up before you continue down this line of thought.

> All that would accomplish is one-time shift the point on the continuum that the earth and society can support.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g...

Built-up land is 1% of habitable land.

Forests 38% of habitable land.

Agriculture 46% of habitable land.

Of ag (100%), there is

    77 % ... livestock (18% calories, 37% proteins)

    23 % ... crops for humans (82% calories, 63% protein)

Plants already play a significant role in providing us with the majority of our sustenance.

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https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares, and return 35% of habitable earth to wildlife and nature

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2022/03/15/it-may-be-uncomf...

The animal agriculture industry is the leading cause of most environmental degradation that is currently occurring.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...

Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries

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We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, double forest area and store entire 1.5C carbon budget (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4) in the process, and enable return of wildlife and sealife (also storing a lot of carbon in them https://www.oneearth.org/how-restoring-key-wildlife-species-...).

All of that just by eating plants, something we are perfectly capable of doing and thriving on (https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/).

Fortunately the human populations growth is slowing down and we are expected to peak somewhere close to the end of this century.