Defeatist? How is proactively choosing to draw down our own population for the good of the planet and to buy us more time to get off fossil fuels defeatist?

Defeatist means giving up. Action is not giving up.

If it were up to me, I'd enact that policies to start heading that way immediately.

It's not up to me. The people it is up to don't want to save as many as possible, they're planning on bailing out.

That's realism, not defeatism.