Earth's recent climate spiral.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think you overestimate the effect of westernization on global fertility rates. Still, it is true that people don't breed like rats or rabbits. We're more cognizant and more responsive to our circumstances. However, if the 4b have western carbon per capita to match their new western ideas about women and children, that's not improvement from the climate angle. Frankly, the entire overpop thing is a lingering effect of colonial attitudes. Where The Problem with the third world is all those ignorant filthy unwashed browns and their hyper fertile women. If they could be reduced in number, some way, then we remaining worthies can enjoy all of their stuff, and wouldn't that be best for Everyone™?

We have crypto for the same reason that we have scarcity - to make and launder money. To really drill this down, crypto is another form of petrodollar - it's predominantly mined where coal is cheap in a bid to turn physical stockpiles into USD. It's real and perceived value is tied to how much energy is consumed to create it. Similarly, alot of the people starving on this planet are starving as they work in food production. They're both fronts for resource extraction, labor exploitation, and market capture...and in this they overlap with the overpop line. Where the right number of 3rd worlders is better matched with the minimum labor required to satisfy 1st world comfort and demands. Crypto isn't great from a climate standpoint, for sure, but more than anything crypto needs to be banned because it's a ponzi scheme. Even if it could somehow be decoupled from ff consumption, it would still be a ponzi scheme. It would still be consuming energy that could be better used to directly address the needs of the communities that mine it..and when it goes belly up (as it's been doing recently) it's not -just- that people lose their shirts... that energy is simply gone no matter where that energy came from.