It's less true that a valid comparison should be "if not modern 21st Century life then hunter gather".
There's a middle ground more agrarian, less hunter, lifestyle that supported a large population in the past and can likely support a larger population than Victorian times if farming | mining switched across to renewables (electric | hydrogen) instead of fossil fuels - we've learnt a lot about efficiencies in the past century, it's a matter of application and less consumption now, certainly time for less greenhouse gas being released.
The Haber-Bosch process is the primary method in producing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen. Ammonia produced, utilized mainly as fertilizers, currently responsible for approximately 1.8% of carbon dioxide global emissions
Yes, green ammonia is a thing - not yet at scale but there are plans afoot, funded by resource billionaires, to make industrial ammonia w/out the greenhouse gas ommissions.
https://fortescue.com/what-we-do/green-energy-research/green...
We reduced famines for a few centuries or less while the population in the most polluting countries exploded. Now, we risk famines and a possible slow death due to extreme drought due to the climate change created by the fossil Fuel Industry, in the billions
The implementation of the H&BP was irresponsible and reckless.
Wild humans would pollute less exactly because they are limited by their environment instead of torturing from cradle to the shop billions of chicks and piglets every year
There are billions of shades of grey, like, for example, living like before the 2000’s, when the massive production of plastic crap in China produced pollution levels to skyrocket.
The alternative meant paying wages in the west