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*.
If CO2 emissions are broadly irrelevant, why worry about them? The difference between "irrelevant" and "broadly irrelevant" is minimal - neither are of any importance.
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?
And my answers are "no" and "that question is irrelevant because it's a rephrasing of the first question and only makes sense if the answer to the first question is yes".
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is far from irrelevant. It makes no difference how many people are involved. 8T and 4 people has the same effect as 8T and 1 person. It's the amount that matters.
*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.
But they might not die as quickly, which might give you more time to treat the other problems. Or it might be that the fever reduces the effectiveness of the treatment that would otherwise cure them. And I'm stretching the analogy a bit far now, so I'll be more direct - solving any evironmental issues is of at least some use in solving the whole 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.
You are the
only person who has mentioned genocide. It's entirely a strawman of your own devising. I have not said you have advocated genocide. Nobody else in this thread has said you have advocated genocide. You are the only person who has talked about advocating genocide. You have not advocated genocide. I have not advocated setting the moon on fire to reduce energy usage by reducing the amount of energy needed for street lighting at night. Greenpeace has not advocated building thousands of huge power stations based on creating energy from millions of people flapping their arms for hours every day. Donald Trump has not advocated solving climate change by attaching ropes to the Earth and using rockets to pull it further away from the Sun. Although he might - you never know what nonsense will pass through his brain and immediately onto Twitter.
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.
The stated timeframe is from months to maybe as much as 15 years. It's an immediate crisis, as I'm sure you've read. And not from climate change deniers. Very much the opposite.
The only way to reduce population enough in that timeframe is killing billions of people. We can't support 8+ billion with archaic farming methods, let alone that and extremely limited bulk transportation and a general antipathy towards technology (which is the inevitable result of technology being seen as the cause of the problems, as you stated it is). So either it's an immediate crisis, in which case the required enormous amount of population reduction would require killing billions of people or the population can decrease as a result of increased living standards, which would take generations and would massively increase the population first...in which case there can't be any sort of crisis requiring population reduction now.
Also, contraception is technology. Would the population reduce much in a situation in which contraception was seen as being part of what caused the problems?
Reducing population by increasing standard of living also creates another effect - it increases the average age of the population, dramatically so for quite a long time. That causes problems. A standard of living that's merely normal in wealthier countries with current technology today results in an average lifespan in the mid 70s and a cleaner environment plus even slightly better technology should increase that to at least 80, probably more. It's already reached 84 in Japan, for example. 80 is a very conservative estimate. 90 is a possibility. There is an initial large increase in population, partly because healthier people are on average more fertile, partly because increased standard of living dramatically reduces the proportion of people who die young and partly because the custom of having more children will remain for some period of time. Add in the fact that the first generation after the change will be living to ~80 (or more) on average and there's no way the population will reduce below pre-change levels quickly. It also creates huge problems with the increasing average age of the population. Japan has already passed 25% of its population being past retirement age and the proportion is increasing.
That problem does eventually go away when enough people die, but it has to be addressed. What is the solution? Nobody seems to have one (Japan's attempted solution is to try to *increase* the population).
I think you have the cart before the horse. Population reduction can't be the solution to the existing problems unless it's implemented quickly by killing billions of people in a very short period of time. Population reduction by improved standards of living would be the *result* of solving the existing problems, not the solution to them.
But radical socioeconomic changes will be required anyway, both to solve the problems and to solve the results of the solutions to the problems. Our current socioeconomic system isn't able to work with a greatly reduced population, less paid work and less environmental impact. People will need a new one that's fit for purpose in those conditions and they'll need one soon. But what will it be?
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.
I disagree with your disagreement. A larger area requires more transportation, which increases environmental impact. Lower population density would make that worse, not better, unless you're envisaging a lot of wholly independent city-states with a lot of uninhabitated land between them.
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.
Only if assuming the continuation of current levels of technology and current socioeconomic systems. Better technology could improve standard of living without increasing enviromnental impact or decrease environmental impact as well or improve standard of living
by decreasing environmental impact. We've already seen many examples, most notably with air pollution in urban areas.
The current economic system requires a rapid churn of stuff and an excess of stuff, so much of what is produced quickly becomes waste and in many cases is designed and manufactured with that in mind. Ending that would dramatically reduce environmental impact without reducing SOL. Random example - I have a very well made woollen jumper that I've had for over 20 years. I wear it often and wash it often. It is exactly as functional as it was >20 years ago, i.e. my standard of living in that respect has not reduced at all. The environmental impact is vastly lower than it would have been with dozens of jumpers, replaced either because they were lower quality and became insufficiently functional or because fashion required many changes. But our current socioeconomic system can't support a change like that.
So I think it comes back to a significantly different socioeconomic system being required.
