But talking about population has become quite the taboo. Utterly unacceptable to restrict reproduction, but it's cool to take people's transport/heating/protein away to save the planet?
More like not necessary anymore, since birthrates tend do decline by themself in more afluent countries, once sex is decoupled from reproduction and children are not the primary retirement plan anymore. "Helping poor countries" is just easier to sell than "We must make them stop having babies".
China is in far worse shape, they restricted number of children for decades, and now they are presented with a demographics crisis that could halve their population in 60 years.