[evandale]

> and possibly suggesting individuals are freer to vary their emissions unilaterally than they actually are

This already exists in the form of carbon credits and people/companies spending money elsewhere (like planting trees) to "offset" the pollution they create. The rich are able to absorb the costs of the carbon taxes and will continue to do whatever they want because they're carbon neutral. Carbon neutrality is complete nonsense. This isn't a "calories in, calories out" situation where you can "maintain" if you spit out 100 units of pollution today but buy trees that will suck up that 100 units over 50 years. It's still ending up in the atmosphere and making things worse today.

> How about measuring per-capita emissions regionally, and with regions sub-divided by population density?

Sure, then that way Alberta will be considered an oil producing region and get a pass for their high per-capita emissions just like Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Brunei, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. I made this comment elsewhere and this is exactly why I think it's unfair to point at Canada and the per-capita emissions. Our big industry and small population is the cause of our high per-capita emissions, and we have an enormous amount of clean energy but we never get credit for that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32977516