Yes! My reply to "this meeting could have been an E-mail" is often: "OK, do you read your E-mail and respond promptly?" I love killing productivity-draining meetings and turning them asynchronous --BUT-- these meetings often get called because a decision needs to be made synchronously(now), and the decision makers can't wait two weeks while you get around to reading your E-mail and remembering to answer.
Those meetings that are simply "status story time" where someone reads a doc to the room? Yea, they should be removed. I don't think anyone likes them.
Many meetings can indeed be emails. Developers tend to be only so-so at identifying which meetings these actually are. And developers are terrible at identifying which two week long email threads could have been a short meeting.
It isn't enough to say "there are too many meetings" and be done with it. You need to identify which meetings can be removed - and that can be tricky.