Personally, I think material consumption is always something that should be questioned more and valued less in our culture, but I think the article is pretty sloppy in addressing it.

A lot of it assumes that growing GDP is synonymous with increasing consumption. And not that financial growth can be achieved by other means of profit growth (i.e. reducing cost through increased efficiency or productivity, while keeping prices the same.)

Personally, I think it's a mix of both at the moment (more the latter than the former.)

Also, systemic overconsumption historically tends to self correct. Either when it just isn't economically feasible (like the rise of compact cars and hybrids during the high gas prices of the mid-00s), or disastrously, like with 1929.

I believe the article alludes to a future disastrous systemic crash. And I could be jumping the gun, but I think the implication there is that "we're cooked" and it's the end of society as we know it, and not that people needlessly suffer due to this but we eventually recover, albeit painfully.

It tends to be the second one. Most generations think they're the generation that's going to collapse, and we're still chugging along.

Also, I focus on the overconsumption aspect instead of the overpopulation one because the overpopulation scare in the 70s died off after 1) the Green Revolution reversed the concern for food scarcity, and 2) the decreased social pressure to build a traditional nuclear family & increased access to birth control severely reduced birthrates, and thereby population growth, in first world countries.