when will we just stop weighing land area over people, and switch to a proportional representation system?
When we have real representation, rather than majority takes all.
No one can afford to be the "loser" in a winner-takes-all system. Rural folks might not be a majority, but they don't deserve to get strangled by an inconsiderate stream of city-specific laws, either. Ditto quer folks aren't a majority, but they don't deserve to get strangled by CIS normative laws, either.
With real representation, if party takes 20% of the approving votes, it must have 20% of the seats at the table.
A fun side effect of proportional representation could be humanity might get clean skies before the climate activists have to rename their party "the anti-extinction" party to gather the needed votes.
Edit: So we need to do better than first-past-the-poll takes all elections. It'll take a lot of pressure off of our goofy legacy workarounds.