[spangry]

Yeah I really don't understand why people have this notion that population growth is necessary for economic growth. It doesn't even follow that aggregate (i.e. non per-capita) economic growth results in a higher average standard of living. I wish I could say this nonsense is only perpetuated by politicians, who do whatever they can to juice GDP so they can boast to the electorate about how much 'economic growth' they achieved. But this would be untrue. Even certain national economic policy institutions fall in to this trap when they really ought to know better.

The other thing worth noting is that economic growth, socially liberal (historically speaking) attitudes towards sex and gender equality, and sustainable population all go hand in hand. On the economic side of things, there's a fairly well established 'demographic transition' model that suggests that when a society reaches (roughly) a 'first-world' level of development, population growth tends towards 0: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/De...

Put simply, one of the best things we can do if we're concerned about overpopulation is to aid economic development in the 'third-world'.