> If a degrowth advocate came out and said point blank that under their proposals it would be only say 2 billion people, at least that would be intellectually honest and I would respect that as a coherent point of view.

Except that the _healthy_ carrying capacity of the planet _is_ 2 billion people, assuming a vegan consumption somewhat less than a first-world level.

Put an omnivorous consumption at first-world levels, and it’s somewhere between 500 million and 1 billion.

Sure, the planet can “support” ten or twenty billion or more, but only by farming 100% of the planetary surface and making 99% of all species extinct, whereupon a complete collapse of the biosphere would quickly ensue, resulting an effective planetary carrying capacity of 0 humans for the following several million years as the biosphere recovers.