While population may be a concern, it's not the main problem.
> The richest 10% of people in the world are responsible for around 50% of global emissions
https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-pub...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global...
Keep in mind that this richest 10% contribute the majority of humanity's value-added commerce and production, cultural output, and scientific output.
For example, Romania has an equal scientific output to Pakistan: https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs
Despite Pakistan being 212 million people vs Romania 19 million. Pakistan emits 178mt of Co2, vs Romania 79mt (2016). Pakistan's CO2 output is 2.2x greater, but their total GDP is only 1.31x bigger.
When you look at emissions against output, its clear that the West and East Asia are substantially more efficient than other regions on the planet.
I guess my point is if Pakistan were able to keep their population healthy and happy with less GDP per capita, scientific input or output, and less environmental impact per capita than Romania, I'd say they were doing alright.
Take a look at the locust, and how in [1], they say:
"Cheke’s team is recommending a fungus called Metarhizium anisopliae, which kills a locust by growing inside its body."
Typically, when a population becomes unsustainable, as humans are because of their immense requirements over vast decades, we tend to find a way to 'control' that population. Typically, this is by killing them.
Yet, because we have the capability to rationalize we understand vast swarms of locusts are terrible yet vast swarms of humans are just something we have to accept. The idea that we need to kill billions of humans would be unfathomable, yet, reducing our numbers will be the only way to make life on earth sustainable - for all living things. This is something Sir David Attenborough also agrees with [2]. This planet is not, was not and will never be capable of sustaining 8 billion healthy, prosperous humans with fair and equal access to food, water and shelter.
We need to kill, or in some way reduce the number of humans on this planet. Anything else is a gigantic waste of time and will only serve as a distraction and way to make us feel better that we can somehow overcome this earth threatening disease called "human kind". Because of our constant encroachment into nature, we are pushing animals to their limits, which is how great pandemics are developing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (e.g wet markets).
Coronavirus is not the worst pandemic we're dealing with right now.
Humankind is.
And whilst we're constantly taking space away from nature, nature will fight back and take away ourselves.
We are the worst problem this planet has.
[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00725-x
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-45741482/sir...