I don't disagree with your predictions, since they are centered on the non-human perspective (in other words, if the discussion was from the human perspective there are significantly different options, not so for animals).Sy Borg wrote: ↑October 2nd, 2021, 2:57 am In an ideal world, people would w̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶t̶o̶ wrap their heads around their existential situation - not as divine overlords of the beasts but part of the Earth's systems, but that's looking unlikely.
Rather, I expect human numbers to continue growing rapidly. It's often claimed that population will be fine because the rate of increase has slowed as a percentage. However, that's still a net increase of around 100 million humans per year. How many species would love to achieve a total population even a hundredth of humans' annual increases! And yes, ever increasing consumption and wasteful status items are another massive problem.
However, when population growth slows those in high places worry about the effects of an ageing population. So we cannot win this battle. Humans will not control themselves, rather they simply continue as usual until catastrophes bring balance forcefully. Thus, other large species will continue to be decimated.
An answer to this? Automation. If the population is ageing, then get machines to do the work instead of using migration and tax incentives to encourage baby-making to make up labour shortfalls. However, that will result in UBIs and consequent increased government control (as holder of the purse strings). It would be better for the animal kingdom, though, as would artificially grown meats.
A possible cause for hope: As climate change bites and technology for creating lab-grown meat becomes more affordable, artificial meats may become cheaper than the real thing. You would expect the top end of the meat industry - free range, organic, grain fed, hormone-free - to remain fairly stable in that situation, but the grotesqueries of factory farming would hopefully be largely supplanted by lab-grown meats.
Basically, animals need to wait for the post Anthropocene to flourish.