Population is a self-correcting system. As people (especially women) get broader education, success, and opportunity, reproductive rates decline. When life is

Population is a self-correcting system. As people (especially women) get broader education, success, and opportunity, reproductive rates decline. When life is tough, people pop out more children. Reducing consumption is a strange one. We keep making our devices more power efficient, but we pile on more of them. We have more efficient cars, but we seem to be driving them longer and more often. Busy-ness fills whatever space it's given, and that's a huge driver of consumption. Of course, the very notion of "start ups" as promoted by sites like this are all about increasing consumption, often with new and frankly superfluous service-based conveniences. Money flows when consumption increases, so it'd have to be a truly cultural shift of simplicity, not a legislative or business shift. While I do think energy consumption per capita in first world countries is probably decreasing, we haven't yet hit "peak population", and lots of people are moving up in poorer nations to be able to consume more.