Industrialized cultures based on capitalism and economic growth encourage increasingly larger human populations which degrade increasinly larger amounts of materials and energy. This process works as long as industrial cultures have access to more materials and more energy.

Note: H.T. Odum's "maximum power" principle applies. "The maximum power principle can be stated: During self organization, system designs develop and prevail that maximize power intake, energy transformation, and those uses that reinforce production and efficiency." (H.T. Odum 1995) It seems clear from Odum's definition that cultural systems based on capitalism and economic growth will not survive when their "main engines" of abundant materials and energy are depleted. The current system will either collapse or mutate due to reduced "net energy" and the depletion of material recources. The Second Law of Thermodynamics will win out.

Relocalization is about learning to live in a lower energy world. A lower energy world means the end of social, political and cultural pronatalist policies. A relocalized community cannot allow itself to be "eaten out of house and home" by an expanding human population, especially if its excess population cannot be legally exported to another area.

By definition, a relocalized community recognizes a limit to growth, including the growth of its human population. The present human population on Earth (over six billion people) cannot be sustained in a lower energy world. Human population will ultimately be reduced to a level that can be supported by the availalbe energy and materials.

Every relocalized community will need a population policy that fits their environment.