[xienze]

> The US is the historically the largest contributor of greenhouse gases by a wide margin

Sure, but guess what: China is right behind us. History means squat. They're a major polluter _right now_. Why are they not held to the same standard we are?

[vidarh]

They're not held to the same standard because if they were, they would rightfull refuse to sign on:

China's GDP was 10.87 trillion USD in 2015 vs 17.95 trillion USD for the US. GDP per capita was 7,926 in 2015 vs 55,836 in the US. China is still a poor country.

When China reaches a comparable GDP per capita, then we can expect comparable cuts to be on the table.

Until then expecting sharp cuts from developing countries will not be a viable alternative.

[swampthing]

They could ask the same question - why is the US allowed to have higher per-capita emissions?

[rbritton]

Why are per-capita emissions a more important number than net emissions? With the former, China is behind us (roughly half) whereas with the latter, they're roughly double based on the current Wikipedia numbers.

[swampthing]

I'm not saying they're more important.

But as for why they are important, I think that there is some relationship between how people live and per-capita emissions. So if you ignore the population size and only look at net emissions, the people in larger countries would be held to a higher standard than the people in the smaller countries.

[joshualross]

China has a a few hundred thousand metric tons before they are close to the historical pollution we have contributed. And last I checked, they are still committed to taking action[1]... if only we could say the same.

Things I've learned in life(mostly the hard way) include that fair is not a thing and does not exist.

[1]https://www.c2es.org/international/key-country-policies/chin...