Quote:But if the underlying problem is an infection, none of those medications address the real problem. And, as far as the world is concerned, population is the real problem, everything else is a symptom.Is that really true, though? If we had a world of (say) 12 billion people, running off a carbon-free energy mix of nuclear, solar, hydro, wind and geothermal energy, where cars and machinery were either electric or were dropped in favour of bicycles, would we have a problem with global warming? I don't think we would. Even some hypothetical ant farm dystopia of 30 billion, where we all just grew food all day with manual labour, could probably be sustained for quite awhile with low-ish emissions, if we completely got rid of the luxuries of the last century, like the automobile, the airplane, and the internal combustion engine.
The problem is the product - population x emissions per capita. You can fix or worsen the problem by changing either side of it. But the area of the world that's the worst on the right side is almost entirely distinct from the area that's worst on the left. Adding two billion people living on 300 dollars a year in sub-Saharan Africa wouldn't meaningfully change world carbon emissions. (Although it might cause other serious problems.) Add a mere 10% onto the first world's emissions per capita, and without changing the population, global emissions would increase by an alarming amount, almost 5%.
Pollution is a symptom of wealth, not population. The easiest way forward is to develop technology that decouples wealth from pollution. Trying to solve this problem primarily with population control in a timeframe of less than centuries is not feasible, because the high polluters are already among the slowest in terms of growth. We need pollution controls more urgently than population controls, although I would advocate for both.
-Jester