The only solution to the over-arching problem of over-exploitation of resources is to reduce the human population, and there is no way any political, ethnic or religious group is going to volunteer for castration.
and the people who would decide not to breed are those whose values we would probably want to pass onto the next generation.
(says man with pile of furry child substitutes) Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
they may be in the time of "granny's death"; whether granny's demise be imminent, imagined, or already happened. The generation gap, the generational angst is certainly not, I think, a given. It is a product--heh! Disagree!--of cognitive dissonance (created by parents and society in contradistinction.) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
If the civilization goes downhill, we may be crudely reminded of some ancient selection pressures. Say, how would people go out without modern dentistry? That booming business consumes a lot of energy, and needs a lot of special chemistry. Depending on the degree of decline, we would have to do without anesthetics, or with slower drills, or with no drills at all. Ouch!
Other turmoil could be caused by lesser availability of optics for ever more near-sighted population.
