This is a very cool analysis and point of view which complements my own view and analysis, indicating by learning from nature, we can deduce (contrary to the popular view), degrowth of humanity is not actually what is needed, but actually the opposite, we need to grow now as a species towards whatever equilibrium population value will be attained, working alongside with, and integrated with this ecology of nature that you have characterised here.
I believe we might as a species mimic the action of the plant layer in the natural ecology.
I believe we are being driven by nature to do this one way or another, we have to become a creative force like the plant layer in your ecology, or become soon extinct.
The key to us getting to that, is by two things, as well as the obvious solar panel technology, we have the technology of hydrogen generation, and actually money issued as energy received.
In our human ecological system to date, money has served as an informal energy carrier, it is the instrument we've all used to convey the 150 or so Joules per second each of us needs 24/7, to power our bodies.
Issued as debt, it extracts the energy from the ground as surely as the nutrients in plants do, before the latter forms leaves.
But issued as stimulus, it conveys the energy from sources receiving energy for free, creating economic product from that, is the energy donated to us for free from the sun.
This is interchangeable for the hydrogen fuel generated from solar energy, as well as any other product created directly from solar, so the money needed to financially enumerate / monetise the solar hydrogen ecology.
Money issued as debt cannot enumerate the energy received for free in this new ecology, which we might recognise is something like the way a plant works after it forms leaves.
This is obviously pretty good news, an incredibly good outcome, better than we could ever hope for, actually, a real sustainable future.
It gets even better, when we take into account the relative rates of energy flow you mentioned.
If plants do things at rate x, then we do things at rate Mx.
To date we destroyed at rate Mx, taking Joules out of use, which were put to use from the sun by nature ( thermodynamically creating heat).
Now we are at a switching point, in process of changing from energy extracted from Earth, to energy received from sun.
After we do the switch, instead of taking Joules out of use from nature, we will be putting Joules into use, from the sun, creating, and thermodynamically cooling in the same way as nature, complementing the production of nature, rather than subtracting from it, as we did before, on energy subtracted from Earth.
At time of leaves formation our population is P.
Until leaves formation, greater P put greater load on energy extraction.
After leaves formation, and the required implementation of financial stimulus, and hydrogen replacement of fossil fuelled human ecology, greater P will mean more hands to the pump, paying back what was an enetgy deficit we had built up, to Earth until that point.
It took us around 150 years to run up the main bulk of this energy debt to Earth.
It looks like we will pay it back down in only 30 or so years, given population continues to grow for a while yet.
Everything after that us energy profit, to Earth and nature.
The cherry on the cake for the human solar hydrogen ecology, given it is obviously very complex, requiring a very special controller to monitor and control all inputs and outputs of both humanity and nature, to ensure all work in harmony, even assisting us to formally analyse and design the system itself, appears to have arrived, as far as I can tell,in the form of ChatGPT.
We could argue all of this is nature at work, all we need to do is follow the signs, and do what is indicated to be the right thing, and all will be good, much better than most of us can comprehend right now.