[ajuc]

Poplation growth is slowing down everywhere, in the developed world (which uses the most energy and resources) it's been negative for some time.

Currently there's about 8 billion people, and estimates predict it will stop at 10 billion people and start to derease in the second half of this century.

So you're calling a temporary increase by 25% "elephant in the room", meanwhile the difference between resource consumption in USA (14 metric tons of CO2 per person per year) and the world average (4 metric tons of CO2 per person per year) is over 300%.