India has 1 billion more people and we pretty much consume everything more than them. The same goes for Africa.
Considering that china is moving towards a consumption based economy and india/africa/ASEAN/etc are desperately trying to follow suit, we are looking to add about 5 billion people to the wealthy western lifestyle in the coming decades. It will certainly increase wealth, but can the earth sustain that many people living the "good" life?
No, the earth cannot sustain ‘good life’ consumption for even the existing population.
If we learnt anything from this covid crisis, it should be exponential growth can be devastating. And that we must flatten the curve. Be it the virus or global population, it’s the same thing.
>How come the people who propose this strategy never put up their hands volunteering to make the required sacrifices?
I've known many environmental activists in my lifetime, and can confidently say your extreme characterization is wrong. It is common in the environmental activist subcultures in the US to choose not to have children while advocating for the reduction of population growth. It is also not uncommon to for them to live lives of severely reduced consumption of material goods, consumption of energy, and production of C02.
