[rwc]

Is that also how the environment calculates the impact? As if per-capita has any bearing on the final outcome.

[bryanlarsen]

"China is worse" is a particularly horrible excuse for America doing nothing given those per-capita numbers.

"America is worse per capita" is a bad excuse for China to do nothing.

[Udik]

The environment knows nothing about "China" or "USA" either, these are just arbitrary groupings of people. You can compare the whole of the USA with arbitrary subsets of China, and find that the USA is the biggest polluter in absolute terms. Of course it's as pointless as comparing the whole of China with the whole of US, what counts is the per capita emissions. Qed.

[inflatableDodo]

Well, it certainly doesn't calculate it by political territory or tribal affilliation.

[belltaco]

If you pee in the river once a month, but the municipality of the town upstream decides to release its entire sewage into it, does the river calculate the impact per-capita?

[adrianN]

If you kill somebody once a month but a government near you decides to start a war, does it make your murder ethically acceptable?

[belltaco]

Terrible analogy. Someone making a campfire, like humans did for thousands of years, isn't doing something remotely as bad as committing murder.

The analogy only works if what a single person is doing is inconsequential if they are the only ones doing it. Murder certainly does not belong there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Murder isn't a good example of it.

[adrianN]

I hardly think that the GHG emissions of countries other than China are inconsequential.