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Per capita emissions are a distraction. The earth’s atmosphere doesn’t care how many people were involved. What matters is total emissions. On that front China
by nborwankar 3y ago
Per capita emissions are a distraction. The earth’s atmosphere doesn’t care how many people were involved. What matters is total emissions. On that front China leads by a factor of 4 or 5 over India and the U.S. which are roughly the same.
- burkaman 3y agoThe atmosphere also doesn't care which governments are involved, or who is "leading". We need all the emissions to stop, this announcement is about 7.5% of the total which is quite significant. 12 more of those and we're done.
- billti 3y agoI thought China and India were still increasing quite rapidly (I could be wrong). Unless they start going the other way, that 7% will be less than the growth from others, so no closer to 0 globally.
- throwsway 3y ago[flagged]
- pier25 3y agoPer capita emissions are a good indicator of the lifestyle of a country. Total country emissions are an indicator of population and lifestyle. Since reducing the population is not an option for most countries, the solution is changing lifestyle.
- HDMI_Cable 3y agoThen again, the US having a much higher emissions per capita assumes that with comparatively much less effort, we can reduce our emission than India or China. For us, reducing our emissions by 10% would mean driving less, eat less beef, investing in new technologies, etc., while for India and China that would mean overturning years of industrialization. While I do agree that both need to reduce emissions, we need to endure inconveniences and move our tax dollars to clean energy, while they have to continue being poor forever or spend inordinate amounts of money to industrialize using clean energy.