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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 a day ago | parent [-]

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

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tsimionescu a day 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 6 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 16 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.