This is already happening naturally without any sort of societal intervention. Who knew that people simply want to have fewer kids because life is better without them?

> Countries should work towards stabilising their populations first

The population growth is already starting to decline; for example, Europe is already experiencing a decline, the population growth in the US has recently flatlined.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/us-population...

U.S. Population Grew 0.1% in 2021, Slowest Rate Since Founding of the Nation

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8393076/

Major Trends in Population Growth Around the World

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/17/worlds-po...

World’s population is projected to nearly stop growing by the end of the century

> overpopulation is the root cause of all this yet an incredibly taboo issue to discuss

The root cause is overshoot. Climate change, resource depletion, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution, overpopulation, soil erosion, and overfishing are all but symptoms of ecological overshoot.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471

Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable on plant-based diets.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449

How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach

“Without concerted action, we found that the environmental impacts of the food system could increase by 50-90% by 2050 as a result of population growth and the rise of diets high in fats, sugars and meat,” he continued. “In that case, all planetary boundaries related to food production would be surpassed, some of them by more than twofold.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/

The consumption of animal-sourced food products by humans is one of the most powerful negative forces affecting the conservation of terrestrial ecosystems and biological diversity.

A little math might help.

environmental_impact = number_of_individuals * mean_individual_consumption

We can either lower mean_individual_consumption, or nature will reduce number_of_individuals forcibly. One way is better than the other.

Well it was the guy I responded to who brought up veganisim as a solution in his top level post, but okay let's talk overpopulation. Axolotl have only ever been known to live in a few lakes which have almost entirely been obliterated by Mexico City, home to 10 million people. What exactly do you propose? Even if the population replacement rate in Mexico City were brought below 1, how many years would it take to depopulate the city? Short of forcing people out of the city at gunpoint (and to where, exactly?) how could you actually get the city depopulated in a reasonable amount of time to save the axolotl who might have a few years left at most? And how would this undo the habitat destruction which already occurred? How would you remove the structure of the city and restore the environment which it replaced decades+ ago?

> And how would this undo the habitat destruction which already occurred? How would you remove the structure of the city and restore the environment which it replaced decades+ ago?

Not an expert by any means, but, as I understand it, Lake Texcoco National Park[1] is a fairly radical project (given the tendencies of urban politics) to move towards answering those questions.

> The main objective of this project is to reclaim the site to a green infrastructure in the valley of Mexico City. Rather than returning the area of an intact ecosystem from before the Spanish colonization, the key is to create a complete balance between infrastructure and nature.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Texcoco_Ecological_Park