In what worldview is Germany among "the world's emerging populations"?
But as I understand the comment the point is more that by burning more fossile fuels we would trade a benefit now for more issues in the future. Sure, it would be nice to have more energy at our disposal right now, but we know that burning fossile fuels causes problems in the future. Doing it anyway and hoping that future generations will find a way to deal with the consequences of our actions seems to me shortsighted and reckless at the very least.
If you are conserned that their are to many people, then faster growth is the best solution.
The question is one of degree. We know it can be bad, but its highly variable. For some it is good as well. The longer timeframe you are talking about the more unknowns their are. So a moderate policy of supporting alternatives and restricting the most harful stuff is not a bad strategy.
I assume you mean less children, right? More wealth means less children but only up to a certain point, after that the trend reverses and even more wealth means more children again. [1] I did not check the numbers but I will give the author the benefit of doubt. It certainly makes intuitive sense that more wealth gives you the opportunity to have the luxury of more children.
It is actually harder to understand the initial decline because it is not obvious that having more children when you are less wealthy is a good thing. Maybe it is just a indirect effect because of less education and human development in general but I discussed this before and am not sure of the best way to think about it, especially because of arguments like having many children is a substitute for other social security system in less wealthy societies which implies that it is not really an indirect effect.
But setting this aside and assuming that the observed pattern does not radically change in the future, then more wealth will not stop population growth but at best slow it down somewhat and the extend of that depends on where the countries finally end up. But it gets worse, not only does increasing wealth not reduce population growth in the long term, it also increases energy consumption per capita. [2]
So increasing wealth gives us more people, which is not good, and higher energy consumption, which is also not good unless it is clean energy. And there is another aspect - India adds 5 times as many people to the world population per year as the USA. But the energy consumption per capita in the USA is so large that the USA nonetheless adds more than twice the additional energy consumption of India per year. [3]
While population growth is a serious problem - a constant 1 % population growth per year will definitely kill every human on Earth within 1400 years - it just won't happen. If there are to many people, they will just die, either starve or get killed in resource wars. The problem will solve itself although I would much prefer that we proactively ensured that population growth will not be stopped by some disaster.
But the more pressing issue is the climate change due to our energy consumption and the way we produce it. We probably can not solve that problem by simply killing enough people. Therefore population growth is at least currently only an issue insofar as it contributes to the increase in energy consumption and trying to reduce population growth by increasing wealth and energy consumption is pretty likely counterproductive for both issues.
But admittedly the exact outcome is not so easy to predict. If countries would stay at the point where the trend in [1] reverses for a long time, then we could get reduced population growth or even a population decline without further increase in energy consumption per capita and the former might offset the later depending on the pace of the increase in wealth. But I do not see what kind of policy could keep countries there, one would essentially have to stop the further development of countries when the trend reverses.
And here is the blog [4] I took the graphs from.
[1] http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/wp-content/uploads/2013/...
[2] http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/wp-content/uploads/2013/...
[3] http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/wp-content/uploads/2013/...
[4] http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-populat...
But I think it's safe to say that he's been proven wrong. Alternative energy technologies, mainly PV solar, really are tracking along Kurzweil's exponential growth curve, such that energy supply will not be appreciably impacted by the restriction of fossil fuels. (Not to mention he was also wrong about those constraints as well, given fracking of source rocks).
Being in the doomer echo chamber is fun, for a while. But at some point, we all have to leave, as Ran Prieur did, and recognize that the cornucopians are right.
But that is really besides my point in the comments here, I am just arguing that it is probably a bad idea to throw more fossil fuels at the problem then absolutely necessary. Especially I am doubtful that using more fossil fuels to overcome fossil fuel usage as quick as possible would yield a net positive outcome. I mean it could work if the boost in development would overcompensate a longer period of fossil fuel usage at lower levels and if that boost would not push us over some bad phase transition or what ever else might go wrong. But are there facts that would support such a decision, I am currently not aware of such.
With regard to Kurzweil's exponential growth curve and Ran Prieur, I will have to have look at that, I am not familiar with what they have to say about the topic.
Whats the evidence that people will increase the amount of children again? I really dont see such trends, the hole first world is flattening out or shrinking.
As for energy, I think that with continuing growth of population, you will have even more urbanisation and that means less energy per person. A New Yorker uses less energy then somebody in a small rual town.
The total energy output of the sun can be massivly harvested for energy. We also have nuclear that we could use far more of. We have lots of proven Gas left, and neither coal nor oil is used up. Their are of course a hole bunch of other viable option. Thats before even considering more futuristic tech.
Even should the price go up, the market can massivly react to it. Their are so many simple ways to save lots of energy that people just dont bother with right now.
As for Climat change, I think the economic predictions on it, are not all that bad. Because of the long time scale we have time to do a hige amount of adoption. Living near the equator will be less habitable, but loving in Canada might be improved. The economic models I have seen trying to account for the cost of adjustment are not actually that high.
Admitatly, if you are right that population growth will rise in the rich countries, we might have a problem in the long term bit their are many other problems that are far more worrying.
There are some rays of hope in the form of population stabilization. But whether we're screwed or not depends quite a bit on what the number is: Is it 9 billion, or 15 billion? Are we already so far past long term sustainability ? Are we screwed due to climate change?
Maybe we'll be eating and burning stuff made in vats by CRISPR-ized algae and 15 billion will be OK, if by "OK" you mean everyone eats, just don't look to hard at the environmental degradation. But without some breakthroughs things could get rather tight.
Yes consumtion is still growing but the alternatives are there and could easly be scaled up. Sure price of energy would increase somewhat and that might lead to a small stagnation in living standerds. Nothing to worrying.
Food production can also be scaled, their is tons of potential land, changes in mode of production and thats even before we get into the more extrem options.
Such a small part of the global economy is food production, and I see very little reason why it cpuld not triple without living standerds going down. Even if the go down, because of general development, they should still rise on avg.