[foobiekr]

I feel like I just don't understand the claim that the developing world should be allowed to have higher emissions.

If we could go back in time and the US had the option at the time of using today's technology, and they chose not to, we would condemn them.

[tzs]

> I feel like I just don't understand the claim that the developing world should be allowed to have higher emissions

Pick some maximum acceptable total level of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Fair would be for each country to be allowed to emit greenhouse gases up to the point that their share of the total in the atmosphere is equal to that total acceptable level divided by the country's population.

Even if you decide to pick a pretty high acceptable total, you'll find that the US is already way over its share, and the developing world countries are all way under their shares. The US has emitted about 8 times as much total as India, for example, and about 4 times as much total as China.

Fair, then, is either for (1) the US to not only cut emissions to zero, but to also implement massive carbon capture to get its cumulative emissions back down to its fair share, so that developing countries can use their fair shares for development, or for (2) the US and other developed countries to kick in to pay for the developing countries to build green infrastructure so that they can develop without making use of cheap non-green energy.

The Paris Agreement includes provisions along the lines of #2.

[foobiekr]

The per-capita argument only makes sense if one expects the carbon footprint of the citizenry to be relatively equal. What this creates, instead, is that in really large countries the allocation will be taken by the people living really energy-intensive lives while letting the bulk of the population live poorly.

The other problem is that this incentivizes population increases since energy is the limiting factor for a developed nation's GDP and they can effectively raise their limit by having more children. That's not a good thing either and goes directly against the fertility declines that are about the only good news we have.

Per capita is one way to slice it, but it's not the definition of "fair."