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It it's not per capita that counts, but per country, then each American should be allowed to pollute 4 times as much as each Chinese person because there are le

• goatlover 2y ago
  The climate doesn't care about countries either, and people in developed countries aren't going to lower their standard of livings to meet some acceptable per capita carbon footprint standard. That's why these kinds of arguments are pointless. Blame China, blame the US, blame the British Empire, what difference does any of that make? Unless you can convince the richer countries to pay fines to the developing ones to help them adapt to climate change.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • card_zero 2y ago
    Possibly you (well, some international body) can do that. Leaving that idea aside, countries matter because countries are controlled by policies, per-country. This doesn't, of course, mean that you get to burn a big bonfire of coal if your country has a small population. The reality is that you get to burn a big bonfire of coal in any country unless it has a law against it. And another part of the reality is that emissions are caused mainly by transport, power generation, industry and construction, all of which can be decarbonised by policy, so the personal carbon footprint thing just isn't relevant because it's not up to individuals, and people having orgiastic fossil fuel bonfires is not the true nature of the problem anyway.