IN COPENHAGEN this week, the world's leaders, scientists, environmentalists and rented demonstrators will tackle ways of reducing carbon emissions which most of them now (grudgingly) believe cause global pollution.

SUPPORT: Activists in Tokyo yesterday with a placard that reads 'Hoping for success in COP15 to stop global warming'. PICTURE: REUTERS

Negotiations over how to do it will be fiercer and shriller than those at a sheep auction on the steppes of Kyrgyzstan.

'You cut your emissions first.'

'Why don't you cut yours first?'

'Because if I cut first and then you don't, I'll lose face in my country.'

'Okay, we cut together. But not 25 per cent by 2050. I'll accept 15 per cent.'

'I'll go for 75 per cent. But by 3050.'

'You won't be around by then.'

'The human race won't be around.'

'Okay, so let's use nuclear energy - coal is filthy.'

'Easy for you to talk. My country has all the coal, yours has all the uranium. How about you sell me uranium?'

'Can't. I need it for my bombs.'

'Then go and jump in a lake!'

'Can't. All the lakes in my country have dried up.'

Guys, you're all wrong. The problem is not with rising carbon emissions - it's with rising human populations.

Reduce the human population, and earth will give a huge sigh of relief.

Reducing population is easier and less expensive than holding international conferences in Kyoto or Copenhagen.

Kyoto is remembered for a Protocol signed by everybody except the world's chief polluter America, and Australia.

Remembered differently?

Most people have forgotten what the Protocol was all about but those who signed it were effectively saying: 'I agree cutting carbon emissions is a good idea and we should all do something about it soon, but I promised my wife I would do some shopping in downtown Kyoto, so see you at the next conference....'

As for Copenhagen, it may be remembered years from now in a totally different light. 'Copenhagen 2009? Wasn't that the year some world leader got a Nobel Peace Prize next door in Stockholm at the same time that he escalated a war in Somethingstan?'

One way to reduce populations quickly and painlessly would be to air-drop boxes of condoms over heavily populated areas. Or we could consider air-dropping nuclear bombs.

Unfortunately, messing about with humans always raises grave moral issues. For example, whom do we nuke first? Starving peasants in undeveloped countries? Wiry factory workers on bicycles in developing countries?

Or hamburger munchers in cars in developed countries who guzzle most of the world's energy? (By the way, why are countries that have too much of everything never called 'overdeveloped'?)

World leaders now seem to agree it is not a good idea for people to urinate in public swimming pools. What they're trying to work out is who should be allowed to, when, and in which parts of the pool.

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