Excellent. But where are they escaping to?
All countries north of 40th parallel are living far beyond their sustenance level. For example Sweden can maintain population of one million and then the food must as simple as possible, mostly potatoes.
We do not know for the "mass famines", but this time was the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300). It is thought that between c. 950 and c. 1100 was the Northern Hemisphere's warmest period since the Roman Warm Period.
Of course, things will change once harvests will start failing, and if you guys had just a bad of a harvest as we had this year (Finland), then it doesn't matter if 50% or 10% of the food comes from local sources; you're going to be reliant on imports anyway.
So it is vital to consider these factors too, rather than recklessly rejecting the spirit of the argument.
A real solution is cognizant of human behavior and the tragedy of the commons. A real solution isn't dependent on every human being lowering his standard of living. The solution to whale extinction from whaling didn't depend on everyone using less whale oil, it depended on finding new, better, sources of energy.
..this is only inevitable if we choose to make it so. The laissez-faire approach to population growth prioritises sparing the feelings of current liberal observers over the happiness of the future inhabitants of earth and the quality of the environment. Whatever mitigation measures we take, a global population of 12 billion are inevitably going to have far nastier lives than 3 billion could.
Our primitive tendency to frame actions into nature can be fixed with education.
If every human being was more aware of how their actions are effecting the world, which is directly effecting themselves, they would realize their vote does matter and it does make a difference. THAT's the real issue with the world right now. People are burying their heads in the sand. Humanity is more connected than ever before with the internet, yet our disconnect with the world is greater than ever before. Even a small reduction in eating meat by everyone, especially red meat, would have huge impacts on the environment.
We need to reframe what higher standard of living really means.