Consumption per capital increase with quality of life. For global increase in a good quality of life implies more consumption.

A good example is our smart phones. I am old enough to remember when there were only land lines. And not everyone had one. Now everyone from India to Africa to USA and even our homeless in CA have a smart phone. Smart phones that are indispensable now use rare metals that are mined. Cell towers have to be placed to ensure connectivity. People have to afford the bills. Every like, upvote, reply, games, online order, tweet is a tiny bit of a carbon foot print.

And consumption grows exponentially. More people means more jobs and more services. Larger carbon footprint. More consumption. More to support that population. We don’t live on 500 sq.ft, air and sunlight alone. It takes a lot to sustain humans.

Take dairy for example. Traditionally China never had dairy in their cuisine. But with a better quality of life, they need cows and fodder for cows. They can’t grow it because the aquifers are poisoned or have run dry. So the cows come from NZ and the alfafa from California sent to China during a Californian drought when we didn’t have water for our citizens but enough to fill the empty shipping containers that carried iPhones and would have gone back empty otherwise.

As quality of life increased in India, everyone drives a car when they used to have public transport. An automobile is a marker of a better quality of life. Human beings like social hierarchies and the way to exhibit this is by possessions.

As the world becomes a better place, we consume more and that has a price too: environment and habitat and eco systems.

Funding of public schools subsidizes education for all which is a noble endeavor, but it takes responsibility away from parents. When unionized public schools = unfunded pension liabilities, the education suffers. More public schools, more subsidized education = more teachers = more unfunded pension liabilities. More work to compensate for the needed taxes = more workers = more employment = more 40 hour work weeks = more commutes = more fossil fuels = more consumption. It’s a Ponzi scheme.

Cutting tax burden to only provide for free public schools will result in more responsible and mindful family planning.

Your final point: if rich countries started looking at sustainability goals, they will consume less. This would make importing more expensive. Only surplus has to be exported.

Let me explain: Commons = environment, air quality, water quality, cultivable land, natural resources. These should not be owned and traded for private profit. I am not against private profit but we can’t have private enterprise exploiting the commons for profit. That’s how we end to with nestle selling bottled water when communities have to pay more to water utilities for their potable water during a drought.

Let me clarify your understanding of my words: I am saying that when rich countries stop trading environmentally hostile goods, this will lead to less exploitation of land and sea. And habitat. And even when it does, it will be for the local population to sustain them.

If there is no market or buyers for habitat destroying palm oil or tiger bones or rhino horns, the stream of income dries up and people can realistically gauge whether their economies and environment can handle more population or less population.

I also don’t know how you went from all this to ‘eating local organic produce’ to ‘less children’. Organic has nothing to do with anything. Resources from the commons should be exploited locally only. Bounded resource exploitation reduces the false sense of prosperity.

Once people taste a better quality of life, they will never go back. Poorer countries have a better quality of life and never at par with what we have in western countries. Give them a taste of a superior quality of life and no one is going to go back to a lower quality of life.

Countries that are less populous are richer than higher density countries. Why? Because when you don’t have much to lose, you don’t know what you are missing. Increasing quality of life is more important than increasing trade of the resources of the commons.