[AlgerianSam]

You’re wrong : the carbon footprint of a Pakistanese, Indian or Nigerian person is in order of 2 tons per year.

The carbon footprint of a US person is in order of 20 tons, EU countries are around 8-10 tons.

So I’d say that the problem lies with OECD countries, no the others.

[surge]

Meanwhile, companies require us to come into work, commute hours, burn fossil fuels, etc.

Companies and governments talk out one side of their mouth about being green and carbon neutral, then tell people they need to burn fossil fuels to come to work, by unaffordable electric cars to be around people you don't work with in expensive to live city centers that they don't pay enough to live in, much less have a family of one or two children, and nuclear is bad.

I've stopped listening, because it's pointless, all I see is highway construction to add more lanes rather than making viable public transportation. If they really believed any of it they'd be doing something about it. I do my little bit, but having this insane nihilistic anxiety about it is far worse.

[throwawaylinux]

Carbon footprint per capita is a poor metric because it incentivizes nations to increase population and suppress quality of life improvements.

If you want to assign blame sure an American might be 10 time more responsible than a Pakistani, a Chinese may be twice as culpable is a French. That doesn't really solve anything though. The problem isn't the amount of CO2 in the air divided by the number of living humans.

Emissions intensity of production IMO is a better one because it promotes efficient industry without exerting the wrong incentives on population or quality of life.

[AlgerianSam]

The problem is total amount of emitted CO2. A large extent of it being emitted by a rather reduced fraction of the total population (rich countries).

Seems rational to exerce change of this reduced fraction. Indian or Pakistani are respecting their share in terms of emissions in order for climate increase to stay under 2 degrees. We are not, so we need to change that.

[throwawaylinux]

When you say "we", policy that can affect carbon emissions and even population trends to some degree are usually made on a country level. So it makes sense for highly emitting countries to reduce their emissions, not for them to be able to purchase "share" by encouraging population growth.

[olivermarks]

Pakistan and India have enormous amounts of heavy industries, Nigeria massive extraction. 'Carbon footprint' per person is somewhat irrelevant in this heavily industrialized context. Globalization has shifted unpleasant, grimmy polluting activities to these types of countries, while people sanctimoniously push mice around in the first world...

[AlgerianSam]

Carbon footprint is a measure that takes into account such transfers and makes it even worse for OECD countries which tend to externalise emissions.

Still, OECD countries are 10-20 worse than Pakistan or India (per person).