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populations have grown the most in the past century in areas where there is comparatively little technology (understood in the modern sense; I guess you could also interpret traditional modes of sustainable agriculture like in India and China as technology).
I hate the way the term technology is used to mean just stuff with transistors in it, or worse, just whatever has a screen. Technology is a set of techniques. Cooking is technology. Language is technology.
Culture is technology. Technology is culture. It's something we should all own.
Kimmo
It's well-established that the main driver of extreme population growth is poverty. Obviously, public health is a complex subject, and you need to factor in the impact of hygiene, etc., but populations have grown the most in the past century in areas where there is comparatively little technology (understood in the modern sense; I guess you could also interpret traditional modes of sustainable agriculture like in India and China as technology).
I'm not talking about an 'ordinary' Westerners consumption. Astonishingly, the worst polluters are just a few thousand people. That's not to try and oversimplify it; of course it has an impact if 'ordinary' Westerners fly to the Maldives on holiday. However, we're talking about people who take at least several flights a week. The ratio of that to an 'ordinary' Western household is mind-boggling.
Obviously, even if all those people changed their ways, it would still leave that kind of 'lifestyle' as 'aspirational' and the cycle would begin all over again of people jockeying to get into that kind of position and perpetuate the nonsense that got us here in the first place.