David also claims or pretends that he, along with other true believers, are working to help manifest "god's" and/or "jesus's" plan for humankind.

The arrogance and all-the-way-down-the-line hubris of such a claim is extraordinary.
Even to begin to do so one would have to have an all-inclusive god's-eye view of Cosmic existence, the nature of the World Process. And every possible dimension of what we are as human beings.
One would quite literally have to take all of the paradoxes of space-time history into account, past present and future.

And why does everything have to turn out to be christian? Check out the List of Deities reference on Wikipedia.

Birth rates are dropping right around the world and this trend is unstoppable.
Bernie Masters,
I hope you're right particularly among those who depend too much on others ! Life should be lived as a Symbiosis not as Parasitism ! The below from Wiki sounds eerily similar to Bureaucracy !

Like predation, parasitism is a type of consumer-resource interaction, but unlike predators, parasites, with the exception of parasitoids, are typically much smaller than their hosts, do not kill them, and often live in or on their hosts for an extended period. Parasites of animals are highly specialised, and reproduce at a faster rate than their hosts

Life's too short to make a detailed criticism of the article. Pellowe doesn't like abortion and most people who are concerned about the impacts of the world's population think abortion is okay.

Bernie Masters referred to "Empty Planet" in another post and I responded then. I won't repeat that, except to say that the title is a dead giveaway that it is a promotional piece (with world population increasing by 80 million a year) not the scientific study Bernie implies.
This is a better review than I could do anyway:
https://overpopulation-project.com/review-of-empty-planet-the-shock-of-global-population-decline-by-darrell-bricker-and-john-ibbitson-part-1/

Second, Bernie didn't read Empty Planet very carefully. Bernie says the peak will be in 2030. Empty Planet says between 2040 and 2060.

And besides that, does anybody think that even with the rosiest of forecasts, the earth with 9 billion is going to be all happiness and sunshine? The standard economic logic is that humans get smarter and smarter every year and therefore learn how to make things better and cheaper every year. Since 2000, except in times of profound recessions, the price of food, energy, building materials and almost every commodity has gone up. It is unlikely that we are getting dumber, so that probably means that demand is increasing faster than supply on our finite planet.

Does anybody think that with 9 billion people demand is going to decrease? That means we’ve got to start getting smarter than we have been for the past 20 years. Is that likely to happen? What would change to make it happen? Which one of the new incredible technological fixes doesn’t work even better when the population is stable? Does anybody think that there will be less destruction of the natural environment while we try to find food, energy and building materials to meet the demands of the rosy forecast of 9 billion? Is destruction of the natural environment a good idea? What about the likely destruction with United Nations median forecast of 10.8 billion?

Many commentators have noted that population growth rates are decreasing and then said "see, problem solved." Of course, the question is, are rates decreasing fast enough to limit suffering and maintain lifestyles. Currently, population stabilization is a kooky nutty outlier theory regarding protection of the environment.

In 1854 there was a cholera outbreak around the Broad Street well in London. A local doctor, John Snow studied the area and came up with a kooky nutty outlier theory that mothers washing soiled nappies in the well was putting the disease into the wells drinking water. He convinced the local authorities to remove the handle from the well. When the well was no longer used, the cholera epidemic was quickly extinguished in that area. About a year later the authorities put the handle back on the well, because they didn’t believe Snow’s kooky nutty germ theory of disease. The germ theory of disease had been hypothesized for centuries in many parts of the world prior to John Snow, but was always considered too kooky and nutty for general acceptance. The theory slowly gained acceptance over the next 40 years due primarily to the work of Pasteur, Lister and Koch, but on the way millions died.

We can be the society that put the handle back on the pump or we can be the society that just left the handle off. We can slow population growth now without much hassle (net zero immigration, no government benefits for more than 2 kids) or we can hope that birth rates slow down while millions that we will never see, die.

Population pressure and poverty go hand in hand! And that poverty is not addressed by climate change desertification and the refugees that creates.

Now all you obsessed idealogues can argue until the sun goes nova? About causes and cures, i.e., a cull by covid-19 or its more virulent big brother?

That won't solve much until and unless we reverse desertification/turn uninhabitable deserts into productive gardens that if done on a large enough scale by retasking current aid dollars?

Allowed the disenfranchised to go home or to a new productive one as new settlers on formerly worthless arid desert land!

And there are no technical difficulties, just nuisance humans who see cheap clean energy and almost free desalinated water as a threat to their current robber baron business models?

If we would reduce the population curve and nake it go the other way? Then we need to liberate enslaved women folk from sexual and domestic slavery!

As educated females suddenly realise they are not property or domestic slaves, but have rights and dreams of their own, including choice abut marriage to whomsoever they do or do not choose.

Two-thirds of the world are domiciled in hovels with no washing machine! Therefore, the resident females, never the lazy layabout men, do all the family's washing by hand!

Put AFFORDABLE POWER INTO THOSE HOMES THEN CLEAN RUNNING WATER.

THEN A WASHING MACHINE AND SUDDENLY, THERE'S FREE 8 OR SO HOURS FOR STUDY AND COTTAGE INDUSTRIES THAT EARN INCREASING DOLLARS!

As this new affluence spreads with affordable power and clean water plus lighting, refrigerators, washing machines and laptops. That world feeds itself, clothes itself and educates those who are currently illiterate, and with improved national economies and improved health and education outcomes, population growth plateaus, then declines.

Moreover, the only bloodshed free way to do it! And needs to be directed at the coal face, not corrupt governments who use it to buy bullets, to slaughter their own!

With the developed world, the beneficiaries of huge new trade and wealth growth opportunities left, right and centre!
Alan B.

Apologies, ericc, you found a mistake I'd made in my original post. I'd intended to write that global population growth would cease in 30 years - by 2050 - but I wrongly wrote 2030. Everything else I wrote however remains an accurate reflection of my views. I've now read the critique of Empty Planet that you provided - thank you for that - but believe it's nit-picking and not a realistic assessment of where population growth is headed.
FYI, I worked in China in 1988 for a few weeks and my host - an American who'd lived there since 1938 - asked me what I'd noticed during our travels through coastal southern China. I said I'd seen a TV aerial in every village, not matter how small. Correct, he said, every Chinese person in the most densely populated part of China was watching Hong Kong TV programs - days of our Lives, Dallas, Dynasty, The Bold and the Beautiful, etc - and they saw the wealth on display in every one of these American programs and said to themselves 'I want that!'. Today, more than 400 million Chinese have been removed out of poverty thanks to capitalism and, for complex reasons, their birthrate is below sustainable levels.
The only question in my mind therefore is what might happen in Africa where birth rates remain far too high to stop population growth. Based upon various projects I've been involved with, education and technology will speed up wealth-creation in that continent - smart phones now replace physical banks, for example - and I'm confident that their birthrate will stop increasing by 2050.