[sparky_z]

Surely, as far as the planet's concerned, the total numbers matter more than per capita. If, say, Andorra hypothetically had the largest per-capita numbers by an order of magnitude, that still wouldn't make them the biggest threat to the planet, nor would it Andorra the most effective place to target activism.

Also, if you look at the trendlines, the US's per capita numbers are going down, while the China's and India's are going up with no signs of slowing. So is their population growth. The US is currently "taking care of itself" more or less, but China and India (already # 1 and #3 in total carbon numbers) are getting worse at a frightening pace. If we spend all of our energy focusing on the US, even if we're extraordinarily successful there, we'll look around in 20 years and see we lost progress globally. As though we didn't heed Amdahl's law and spent all of our time optimizing the wrong function. The most important thing we can do is find some way for China and (especially) India to grow their economies and pull their citizens out of poverty in a way that doesn't destroy the planet.

[umanwizard]

It would make Andorra and countries similar to Andorra the most effective place to target activism, assuming the total population of those countries was large enough to be meaningful.

According to Wikipedia, there are 41 countries with more emissions per capita than China, including some with large populations like the US, Japan, Germany, Australia, South Korea, Russia...

Really, my point is that it's wrong to think in terms of "countries" because country boundaries are arbitrary. Like, if there were one small town with 1000x the per capita emissions as the US, it wouldn't matter. What matters is the number of people multiplied by the amount they emit.

[sparky_z]

I edited in a 2nd paragraph about trendlines while you were responding, sorry about that.

Country boundaries aren't arbitrary because they are where policies are made. If you could just pick the top 1-billion polluting individual humans in the world and focus on them, that would be ideal. But that obviously doesn't work. You have to operate on the level of political groups. Nation states are the most obvious groups because they can respond to geopolitical pressures.

[reallydude]

> it's wrong to think in terms of "countries" because country boundaries are arbitrary

Policies and social behaviors (enforced by nations or voluntary) are not. People cause the pollution we're talking about, so we have to deal with them as they are.

> What matters is the number of people multiplied by the amount they emit.

Pointing to per capita rather than aggregate is a deflection. Either the environment is in practical danger and we need to reduce total aggregate emissions, or we need to do that AND need to mildly reduce emissions through personal responsibility (virtue signaling) leading to "eventual good" by habit forming. Either way the aggregate matters most, per capita least.

I believe that the situation will come down to a trade war before a physical war, which still involves nations and absolute measures. Once those measures are involved, then per capita will become a factor internally (to the nations involved). Convince me otherwise. I will not reply, but I will read/listen. I'm genuinely interested in the train of thought that other people follow.

[robocat]

> Also, if you look at the trendlines, the US's per capita numbers are going down

US is trending up again:

https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18174082/us-carbon-emissions-20...