[quartus]

How did you cherry pick that list? The actual top countries per capita from your source are:

  Qatar 40.1
  Trinidad & Tobago 37.78
  Kuwait 34.24
  Netherlands Antilles 23.55
  Brunei Darussalam 22.96
  United Arab Emirates 22.31
  Aruba 21.59
  Luxembourg 21.34
  ...

But looking at the total, rather than per-capita, carbon emissions makes more sense if we want to actually cut total carbon emissions.

Here is the list of top CO2 emitting countries:

  China 10,877.2
  United States 5,107.4
  India 2,454.8
  Russia 1,764.9
  Japan 1,320.8
  Germany 796.5
  South Korea 673.3
  Iran 671.5
  ...

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... , which cites the source https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/fossil-co2-emissions...

[slake]

But then why look at total per year. Calculate the cumulative total since the start of the industrial revolution. That number is relevant for the situation we're in today.

[NotSammyHagar]

It's somewhat useful to know how much we did in the us but you can't go back in time and change what the us did from 1900-2000. I don't get the point. We can all only change what we emit now and into the future.

[jaakl]

It would be fair if the ones who did all the pollution (and also got the benefits from it) would clean the mess up now.