> The old slogan of "reduce, re-use, recycle" (in that order) still applies.
Applies to what? R-R-R will buy some time. It will not solve the problem in the long run.
> There is no magic bullet.
Yes, there is: birth control. The solution to the problem is to stop the underlying unsustainable process, which is the exponential growth in human population. That is the ONLY solution.
"Ideal" is a matter of taste. If you like to hang out in big cities your ideal number might be bigger than someone who doesn't. Personally, I think we are well past the point of diminishing returns for any reasonable quality metric. But just getting people to acknowledge that this is something worth thinking about would be significant progress.
> That's pretty drastic.
Yep. We've dug ourselves into a pretty deep hole. Getting out will not be easy.
Everyone living like the US is put at using 4x the planets resources, which would suggest 1.5 billion people. That's the extremes too, the EU consumes much less.
