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One problem with this line of thinking is you just end up with a deadlock between countries pointing at each other with "You're higher pollution per capita" vs

One problem with this line of thinking is you just end up with a deadlock between countries pointing at each other with "You're higher pollution per capita" vs "You're higher total pollution" e.g. Canada as a whole doesn't emit that much CO2 but we emit a lot per capita because it takes a lot of energy to keep warm and renewables are not as reliable further north. Our political parties frequently like to point out we're <2% of the global footprint as justification to increase investments in oil/gas while conveniently omitting that we're 0.5% of the global population.

mdp2021 4y ago
> per capita Of all the possible debate proposals for the exploration of complexity in the problem, the one that can have the most limited credit is the idea that "total production" could be the metric to base policy. That better metrics than "per capita" could be found (energy spent how, by what, with which care towards compensating the externalities), sure, granted, complex but interesting - but that a gross aggregation could mean anything is hardly serious. It would be akin to "The one with the highest total GDP picks the short straw". It may happen that somebody steps in with the idea, sure, but the answer - at least in terms of discussion - would be easy (and involve a "this is not serious").