Do you have some numbers? All the ones I know point to rural populations having significantly larger pollution footprints than urban populations, despite those advantages.
I don't think it's realistic to lump all rural populations together. For example, the unabomber's woodsman hut style existence probably had effectively zero pollution footprint. Whereas, the also American example of a large scale industrial farmer with a four bedroom house, two cars and a family, large scale farming equipment, and expectations of 24x7x365 electricity, water, sewerage, cell phone signals, non-local products and in-school education for his children is going to be worse than an urbanite.
If you are ever lucky enough to get the chance visit some more traditional cultures, you can see for yourself just how slight an impact they make on their environment, with houses, food, and clothes alike built from nature. It's amazing.
So, my position isn't realistic because it doesn't take into account the possibility that large parts of the population may choose to go back to a pre-industrial life?
No, I was pointing out the methodological problem with your suggested use of statistics, and that of course we have a spectrum of options when moving away from cities. My own feeling is that most of them are going to lead to less impact on nature, but perhaps you are right and in the short term many people will demand the same level of convenient consumption. Time will tell. Eventually, however, it seems clear to me that practicality will triumph convenience, since it's widely acknowledged that the first world presently consumes on a level that is ridiculously unsustainable and we will simply run out of the capacity to continue.
