Fair? Maybe not, but IMO it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is gross emissions. The effects of a warming planet will not be fair. We should be looking to reduce/eliminate emissions wherever they are happening.

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fjwater 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think it's fair to look only at gross emissions by country. How can we demand that India drastically cut its emissions when its per capita output is already so low? Forcing reductions there effectively caps their living standards while developed nations continue to enjoy the benefits of much higher individual carbon footprints.

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vrganj 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

China's actively fixing the problem. [0]

Why aren't we?

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/china-co2-emis...

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LegionMammal978 13 hours ago | parent [-]

U.S. and EU CO₂ emissions have been actively dropping for the last ~20 years [0]. (Of course, it's different question how quickly they ought to be dropping.)

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

	▲	teamonkey 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That’s because we’ve outsourced so much of our manufacturing to China. Of course ours is going down while theirs is going up.
	▲	triceratops 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Good. They should keep doing it and faster.

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tzs 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The only thing that matters is gross emissions

Which is why, unless you can come up with a good argument that some people have some kind of divine or natural right to a bigger share of whatever global emissions budget we decide we need to stick to, per capita is the correct way to compare countries.

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tock 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fairness matters because the only way we can collectively decide to reduce emissions is if people everywhere feel its fair.