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Also please stop comparing absolute numbers between countries with more than an order of magnitude population difference.

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UltraSane 21 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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tsimionescu 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Relative numbers are what matters realistically when comparing countries. The comfort and buying power of 1.4 billion Chinese people counts as much as that of all of the citizens of the EU and USA together.

It is not in any way moral or acceptable to imagine that China or India should have lower total emissions than the EU or the USA, despite having many, many more citizens.

And this is not even discussing total historical emissions, which is what actually matters most for global warming, and where the first century of massive emissions was almost exclusively due to Europe and the USA.

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UltraSane 20 hours ago | parent [-]

I know it isn't fair. Life isn't fair and neither is climate change.

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tsimionescu 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not about fairness. It's about the fact that countries which have huge emissions per capita can't rest on their laurels if they have relatively low total emissions. Instead, they need to take an active role in reducing emissions - both their own, and those of people in the developing world. If Germany or the UK or Norway or France (not to mention Canada or the USA) want to reduce emissions more but can't realistically reduce theirs as much, then they need to, for example, start donating green energy solutions for developing countries, to allow them to grow their economies and comfort while keeping their own CO2 emissions lower.

What these countries can't do is start pointing fingers at others and claim that people in India say, who emit 2T CO2 per capita, are the real problem compared to their 14-7.

	▲	RugnirViking 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		look at the trend lines of co2 emissions per capita for countries. You might find it interesting. heck, even just look at co2 emissions per capita NOW. we arent talking about a high and mighty high emissions population dictating down to countries with low emissions that they should reduce. We're talking about china with more emissions PER CAPITA than europe, and every individual country in europe. Many developing countries are worse than pretty much every european country. Libya, iran, malaysia, all worse than every country in europe. Europes emissions are going down over time. Chinas are going up - in an exponential curve. this is the point where people deflect and claim "oh, but those countries manufacture stuff the west uses, it's their fault" It's really not. A big part of the reason they manufacture those things and the west doesnt is because the west actually bothers to hold up any kind of environmental laws at all, driving companies away

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kalleboo 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah it's going to suck for Americans as the US has to lower their total emissions to match the country of Denmark.

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tzs 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absolute numbers matter when considering the total CO2 budget for the Earth.

When considering how to divide that budget among the people of Earth absolute numbers for countries do not matter, because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary lines humans draw on maps.

One easy way to see that per capita is the correct way to allocate the budget rather than per country is to consider what happens if countries split. Suppose we agree on a worldwide budget of 4 x 10^10 tons of CO2/year.

If we go by country each country's share is 2 x 10^8 tons/year. That would mean in a small country like Liechtenstein they could live a lifestyle that required 5000 tons/year/person.

Meanwhile, in the US we could only live a 0.6 ton/year/person lifestyle--about what Zimbabwe uses today. That's about 1/25th of the current US lifestyle.

That is not going to work. The US could hold a constitutional convention and dissolve with each of the current 50 states becoming an independent country, and at the same time make strong free trade and mutual defense treaties. They can call this the "American Union".

That raises the number of countries in the world, so each country now gets a smaller slice of that 4 x 10^10 tons/year global emission budget. Collectively the total emissions budget of the combined states in the American Union is around 8 x 10^10 tons/year. That allows the American Union to live a 24 ton/year/person lifestyle as a whole (which is 60% more than the current US lifestyle).

Of course China, which only gets a 0.16 ton/year/person lifestyle under the original country allocations could do the same thing. If they did the Chinese Union with the individual countries being what are now prefectures, that Chinese Union could have a 15 ton/year/person lifestyle (about the same as the current US CO2 emissions.

Each time a large country does this "split into a strong union of separate countries" thing the boost in how carbon intensive a lifestyle that union's residents can lives comes at the expense of a drop in what the rest of the world can have.

The limit of this is a world of thousands, or even millions, of micro-countries, each with about the same per capita CO2 allowance.

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DiogenesKynikos 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hey, I personally produce less CO2 than the entire USA combined. I guess the USA better up its game!