The first time I heard this laid out was by an environmental ethicist at a lecture to a philosophy department. It's not even controversial, not even among the climate-change-will-kill-us-all set, just counterintuitive.
The real solution to whatever human-produced negative climate changes there are is to have fewer people -- a road we are definitely headed down already, with fertility rates having fallen below replacement almost worldwide. As the developing world catches up (down?) with that, you'll see pressure relieved fairly rapidly over even a few generations.
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The point is that they want to feel good about how humanity is acting overall. Data is irrelevant.
Someone was going on and on about how range cattle are evil and their, ahem, output is destroying the planet and beef requires too much water (all the usual things). I pointed out that it takes three times the water or more to process a pig carcass, and then asked "Will you join a rangefire fighting crew?" I got a blank look. "Because cattle, under proper grazing management, keep rangefires from happening and improve the health of the ecosystem." More blank looks. They'd never actually looked into "what cows do."
LittleRed1
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