Population growth’s contribution to the rise in greenhouse gases are almost negligible - wrong

SHOOT: Interesting psychology. The study found that Africa had 18% population growth but contributed only 2.4% of emissions, while the USA had 3.4% population growth, and contributed 12.6% of emissions. Of course everything is increasing, population and emissions [just not the world economy]. But the good Doctor Satterthwaite confined his diagnosis to simply contrasting the Africa and US figures, and decided this meant population growth isn't correlated to greenhouse gases. Quick question. If emissions are rising, and populations are rising - I'd call that a correlation. The USA is the world's largest consumer of energy and pollution. So if you increase the number of high-per-capita resource consumers, you also increase the rate of pollution. QED. It's amazing to me how intelligent people can be so unintelligent, but if your salary depends on it... There's a documentary out now called The Age of Stupid. Not for nothing.
http://www.urbansprout.co.za/cape_town_a_part_of_the_global_premiere_of_the_age_of_stupid

clipped from www.urbansprout.co.za This week a study by Dr David Satterthwaite of the International Institute for Environment and Development analyzed changes in population and in greenhouse gas emissions for the entire world. His research, which assessed data between 1980 and 2005 reveals that population growth’s contribution to the rise in greenhouse gases are almost negligible. Sub-Saharan Africa, which had 18.5% of the world’s population growth had only 2.4% of the total carbon dioxide emissions, whilst the United States, with 3.4% population growth had 12.6% growth in carbon dioxide emissions.