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Comment by jamesblonde | Hacker News Reader

The elephant in the room that people don't talk about is population growth. If we don't get that under control, there really is no chance of us avoiding catastrophic consequences, like melting of the methane clathrates.

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The vast majority of the CO2 is produced by only a small part of the population (the rich people in the west), and they aren't the ones whose population is growing.

Actually China is #1, triple the USA. Have they stopped growing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

How much of that is by factories producing things for consumers in the west?

Its mostly charcoal cooking fires if I understand right.

China has a birth rate distinctively under the one necessary for a constant population. But as people keep living longer, the total population is going to grow slightly for some years to come. The bigger environmental impact is, that the energy consumed per citizen is still growing as prosperity develops.

Education, prosperity and equality can solve that.

TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_...

Prosperity == higher living standards, which means more resource consumption per capita. So you merely substitute population growth with increased living standards as driving factor for emission increases.

I take issue with Hans Rosling (even though i happen to live in Stockholm). His message is 'dont worry, they will have babies for 50 years, then it will be all ok'. Sub-saharan Africa will have a similar population density to south east Asia. The world will have 10 billion. That's ok. But the truth is we don't know the carrying capacity of the earth. It's deeply unpopular to say this, but the only way i can see us solving this collective action problem is with a world government.

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