[SketchySeaBeast]

You're speaking in certainty when there's no actual direct link between a reduced population and needing to remove environmental regulations. They seem fairly orthogonal. Sure an argument could be made that it could happen, but that's not how you're presenting it.

[throwuwu]

The link is the collapse of our civilization. It’s not a certainty but it’s a knife edge we’ll need to walk. We need a lot more automation to start with since the labor pool is going to dry up and there will be massive competition for immigrants. We need to fund our social safety nets somehow. We need to figure out what businesses are going to do when demand drops. We have to humanely care for the growing portion of aging childless people.

Doing all of that while the available labour, researchers, economic output and tax base shrink is a dangerous minefield to walk through. It may result in a feedback loop that crashes everything.

One of the scariest things to consider is if we are replacing 2 people in a position with 1 person then that single person now needs to learn the tacit knowledge and technical skill of 2 people they are replacing. That’s a recipe for lost knowledge and regression if I ever saw one.

[carlosjobim]

> We need a lot more automation to start with since the labor pool is going to dry up

Automating what? The idea of production is to make things for people. As people are exterminated, there is less need for that level of production and the labour.

> We need to fund our social safety nets somehow.

The elderly has a gigantic amount of wealth as it is right now. They can finance all safety nets needed for their elderly peers, but prefer to just tax the youth even more and if that means young people can't afford families that's no concern of them.

[SketchySeaBeast]

But none of what you're describing necessitates less environmental restrictions or going back to burning wood. Lost knowledge in 99% of positions isn't going to send mankind back 100 years.