The human population is apparently reducing itself already; people don't need to have 12 children in order to end up with 6 living ones anymore and rising GDPs in 'developing' counties, and the education and emancipation of women leads to lower birth rates. China is already shrinking as people chose a higher standard of living. Some are starting to say we need to give incentives to women to have the required numbers of babies (and therefore penalties for those women who don't do their duty) in order to pay our pensions and healthcare in ageing populations.

Instead we could be planning how to live without capitalisms need for constant growth. People could live in smaller towns where we knew and cared for each other with healthier and independent OAPs. There'd be less nationalism and no proxy wars. But Caitlin is right; we're programmed and socialised for consume consume consume more more more. We could very easily stop destroying the earth and give back huge amounts of land for actual rewilding (not the fake kind with farmed animals) and wild, free animals would roam about the planet.

But we'd have to get out of the mindset that humans are meant to dominate and control and be just another species doing its thing.