Information has tons of value. I'm not a fan of copyright but I also don't agree that physical products are inherently more valuable.

Also regarding insurance raises and other price raises. Prices usually rise when demand rises. So it's a measure of what people want. Much better than just measuring pure survival. Now if all prices rose, that would be inflation, and GDP accounts for that. But if the price of one product rises while the prices of others fall, that's just shifting consumer demand. Of course GDP isn't perfect since there can be monopolies, oligopolies, and state-controlled companies, but imo it's better than using population as a measure.

Energy is money, and US will use more of it per capita because we have more money per capita. That’s going to be true until there’s a massive economic recession or a technology that greatly increases efficiency.

Or you reduce consumption, but the line going down is not part of the plan for China or the US.

Fossil fuel emissions are also a human construct. We did fine before fossil fuels, and even coal. Population is a horrible measure because all it captures is if you are keeping people alive. Even North Korea can keep people alive. But people want more than just survival.

But fine, you want to talk about population? You're ignoring the second example I brought up. The EU has 1/3 the population of China and 1/4 the emissions. In other words, China is still the problem.

Edit: I just did the calculation, and North Korea is 4x more "efficient" than China if we are using carbon emissions per capita. I don't think population is a great measure, to say the least