I guess it's the logic behind the vaccine mandate fearmongering. If one would want to reduce the population maybe the easiest method would be a stochastic approach by injecting at random a malicious agent affecting health or reproduction globally. Of course it would mean we do have such an agent and we know how to control it, which I doubt, but it's sound (and kinda painless).

Oil is a hell of a drug for civilization, and I'm not sure how we will willingly tune off of it, unless we chose a radically different economical organization.

But as many I am kind of hopeless as it seems competition, which fuel this need, is at the core of mankind (or at least the leading West)'s mentality.