Then I'll rephrase it.
You stated that the amount of CO2 emitted is "broadly irrelevant" and that all that matters is CO2 emissions per person and that it's a fallacy to think otherwise.
So I asked if you thought climate change could be averted by increasing population (without increasing emissions or increasing them less than the increase in population), thus decreasing CO2 emissions per person.
That's the most straightforward a phrasing of the question that I can think of. I didn't think it was a convoluted question and I still don't.
And you're doing it again, taking something and assuming black and white.
No, it would not be averted, obviously. Thats why population reduction is required as well as, hence why I didn't say "irrelevant", I said "broadly irrelevant"... Nothing is as simple as doing one thing to solve a problem*.
I'll ask you the counter question. Do you think a country like China should have to reduce their emissions per person to that below other nations? If someone in a developed country on average "emits" 8T of CO2, why should someone in China also not be able to, just because the country overall emits more due to the much higher population?
*In fact this is my main issue with the amount of press time climate change is getting at the moment. If we "solved" climate change tomorrow it would't solve all the other environmental issues. It's like "curing" the fever of someone with Ebola. They're still going to die.
And using that attack on dissenters regardless of their reasons for disagreeing with you as an excuse for not addressing the biggest cause of the problem is an extremely unpleasant thing to do. It's politically useful to go after the safest, softest targets but it's not addressing the stated problem.
If the UK reduced its CO2 emissions by 2/3rds, as you propose, it would reduce global human-related CO2 emissions by ~0.6%. Do you think that's enough to solve the problem?
In which case I apologise. It gets rather boring when the first thing people think when you discuss population reduction is genocide. As said before, anyone sane discussing the issues of overpopulation is not talking about genocide, yet it's the first thing detractors come up with. Just as the main argument form climate change deniers seems to always be the claim that those advocating a reduction in CO2 emissions want it to happen literally overnight.
And I'm not just talking about the UK, I'm talking about humanity. If we (humanity) reduced our carbon emissions to that of the average Indian then worldwide emissions would halve (note, I'm using India because it was one of the examples brought up earlier by someone else). Thunberg isn't just talking about the UK either, nor the developed world, but the world as a whole.
We are doing so - since 1990, the CO2 emissions of the UK have dropped by 35.6%. One of the largest drops for any country and the largest in a major economy.
Agreed, the UK is at the forefront of the developed world in reducing carbon emissions. Much of that is due to the cost of coal, but it's also due to the push by successive governments to legislate emissions reductions. Each person in the UK is still responsible for more carbon emissions than the majority of the worlds population though, so no resting yet.
If you're considering other factors in weighting emissions reductions (a far cry from your previously stated position of ignoring emissions entirely), you should also consider other relevant factors such as size, climate, living standards, infrastructure requirements (concrete is required for building and it's a major cause of CO2 emissions). Not just population. The size of a country, for example, has a large effect on how much transportation is required within the country and transportation is a factor in CO2 emissions.
Aside from the fact I specifically didn't say ignoring emissions entirely.... I don't disagree. There are a lot of factors that affect the amount of CO2 produced by each nation. That said, it still doesn't account for most of the difference. The reality is someone in the UK that owns a 100m2 brick house with two cars and eating meat with every meal is going to be responsible for far more CO2 than someone living in a 10m2 wood house with no cars who eats a mainly vegetarian diet even if they lived side by side. Unfortunately for humanity that person in the 10m2 house wants to be like the average Brit...
I disagree regarding country size however. It's not to do with the area of a country, or the overall population size, rather population density. That can affect entire regions encompassing multiple countries, or just small parts of a single country.
Therein lies the rub. As living standards increase in the developing world things are only going to get worse. Even if renewables take much of the strain from an energy generation POV there's going to need to be a lot more food, materials to make products and cars etc etc. 8 Billion people can't have the same standard of living that most people in developed countries have now. We either sacrifice our own standard of living (which no one wants to do), we force others to stay at a lower standard of living or we have a crisis. Realistically, as mentioned before, it's not an either or scenario. We need to change our standards of living (and wastage) and we need an overall reduction in population.
