> I didn't say that waiting for western countries to decline to 5% of their populations was solution.
I suppose not, though what you say later in this comment is remarkably close:
> Most of the highest consuming countries have naturally declining populations, so one thing would be to leave those alone rather than institute growth policies.
Moving on:
> What's really odd is that you think an observation is verboten if it does not come with any solutions!
Well, all right, you kinda got me there - I do, in fact, believe that observing a problem without suggesting solutions is not particularly helpful in most cases. "Verboten" is too strong a word, though - one should be as free to make pointless remarks as productive ones in a public forum such as this.
And, for what it's worth, I didn't intend my question as a "gotcha" - I appreciate that you actually answered it. Broadly, I agree with you: taking advantage of demographic transition through eg. better education seems like a good tactic, as does avoiding policies that tend to boost consumption.
Unfortunately, since anti-growth policies are antithetical to our current economic order (again, broadly speaking) I'm stuck on what combination of influences would actually synergize to make these changes possible and/or more rapid. Fortunately, I suspect at least one important transition is happening now, in the minds of the people of the world (the wealthy nations particularly) deciding they do not need as much as they are used to having access to.
To be as transparent as possible about why I care about this matter, the perspective on the destruction of the biosphere that I've internalized is that it has gone so far that mass human casualties are likely in my lifetime, and moreover that this will be how I personally die - either directly via environmental effects (heatstroke? fire? flood? famine?) or from the social breakdowns that will multiply as the foundation of our society crumbles away. I consider this outcome existentially bad and want to avoid it, to say the least.
Given this, I very urgently desire solutions that DON'T take 500 years to work, because if those are all we can come up with, then we might as well not bother: this civilization of ours is doomed sooner rather than later.