Climate Change, page-830

"All the co2 that has been returned to the atmosphere, originally came from the atmosphere. It not new. it was always in the system."

Yes, its been in the system, but it hasn't always been in the atmosphere. And when CO2 levels were higher than they are today (it got to around 3000ppm IIRC) guess what? the earth was much warmer, and we had a weaker sun too!.

You're also negating the rate at which these natural fluctuations of CO2 occurred. In the past, it was over tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands of years. This allowed the environment to adapt as the rate of CO2 change and ergo the rate of warming was relatively slow. Now, we are seeing that rate on a scale of decades and centuries.

"I was in Bhutan a few weeks ago. It is hailed as being carbon neutral. There is no industry, unemployment is through the roof, most of the trucks are clapped out, people are very poor. There is not a bright future for youth, but hey, they are carbon neutral. Perhaps the money spent on transition would be better spent on poverty, education, eradicating curable diseases, gender equality, and clean water."

What a lovely anecdote, unfortunately, your observation of "unemployment through the roof" (google tells me its about 6%, Australia is 4.1% for comparison), People are very poor (You visited a third world country for god sake) yet, their GDP is rising
All the things you mentioned aren't because the country is carbon neutral. Its just an odd way to make an argument.

Most of Bhutan's Carbon Naturalness comes from the fact it is relatively non industrialised and has vast forests. As far as I can tell, they didn't spend money on "transitioning".

Yes, the old "But China/India/whoever else are building more coal powerplants, emitting more CO2 etc etc"
If every country said "what about that other country!" then nothing would get done. We (an industrialised rich country) should lead the way.

Ill put it in another sense. My person income tax makes up less than 0.001% of the total taxes collected by the Government. Therefore, because its such a small amount, then they wont miss it if I dont pay it. But if everyone shared the same view, then no body would be paying the taxes.

I'm not dismissing your point that coal, oil, natural gas lifted people out of poverty. This argument has already been debated pages back. Nor have I advocated that less developed countries shouldn't have access to reliable power etc.

The goal post of the debate has been moved regarding the authenticity of whether CO2 creates a warming affect in the atmosphere, to "Fossil fuels are needed to lift people out of poverty"