There is no such thing as a carbon neutral human. We're ~20% carbon by mass.
I do agree with your point about money though--economic activity is the primary cause of our excessive carbon footprint. We need to change how we practice money such that "number go up" type thinking correlates with progress toward agreeable goals instead of correlating with the consumption of nonrenewable resources.
Every 15 people is a ton (on average). And while we can't remove 20 billion people, 6 billion or so would make a nice dent. Additionally, those people consume energy. Once their consumption drops to zero, we see additional savings.
I think I really have stumbled upon a solution here. The planet will be better off for it. What's wrong with this idea?
An increasing number of countries have declining birthrate. This slowly, steadily gets us in that direction but not without demographic problems and significant economic disruptions. Let's try keep it peaceful...
but ants are like a human who doesn't spend money, or like a bird, they are sustainable, no need to remove them
but no even need to be extreme/binary, 8 billion humans who live like a 3rd world country-side human and spend a little money is totally sustainable without any issue, because that's equivalent to less than a hundred million 1st world humans
I do agree with your point about money though--economic activity is the primary cause of our excessive carbon footprint. We need to change how we practice money such that "number go up" type thinking correlates with progress toward agreeable goals instead of correlating with the consumption of nonrenewable resources.