[onetimeusename]

This doesn't take into account that countries like the US have already cut emissions and emissions have been declining for years. Meanwhile, China has much greater total emissions than the US does and emissions in China are increasing per year continuously as they are in India. Total global emissions are what matters for the climate. Although reducing waste and being more efficient are always helpful, fixating on lifestyles of people like US citizens is not particularly useful.

[refulgentis]

Source? (AFAIK it does, and it'd be very unexpected for it not to. The rest of the comment is unclear to me. I may be reading it as a strawman instead of a steelman -- would a reply like: 'just because our derivative is negative doesn't mean on a per-capita basis we're less' be accurate? I'm sure I missed something)

[onetimeusename]

Source for what? That emissions are declining in the US?

You can find some details here https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... I am surprised you didn't know this already.

Here is China https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.KT?location...

It doesn't take into account trends that already exist. In the next decade small reductions to emissions in US transportation per year will be meaningless. Also reducing agricultural emissions which are only 10% of CO2 emissions in the US will have little affect on total global emissions. I'm not sure why there is so much hand waving about the CO2 emissions of China alone.

[refulgentis]

> Source for what?

"This doesn't take into account that countries like the US have already cut emissions and emissions have been declining for years."

> You can find some details here https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... I am surprised you didn't know this already.

This being US / 1st world emissions are decreasing? Thank you for looking that up etc., I appreciate it -- I did know that, and seriously, thank you for taking the time to source it: I'm only saying I knew so you can rest assured at least one other person is up on data. These are strange times and it's hard to get a read on if facts are common knowledge or not, and our estimate of that can cause intense feelings.

Putting my comment more simply and extending it so it doesn't feel like I'm passive-aggressively quoting my comment back at you:

I'm curious why we think the per-capita emissions data "isn't accounting for it decreasing"

[onetimeusename]

What I am taking issue with is the assertion from the other poster that "Greenhouse gasses scales super-linearly with income" which links to a page. That page looks at one year, 2021, and makes assertions that don't account for annual trends like the decrease in emissions the US has been experiencing for years and will continue to experience. The US _IS_ reducing emissions. It also doesn't take into account the large expected increases over just say the next decade in countries like China.

Total global emissions are an important factor to consider for the global climate and focusing only on reducing emissions of the US will be meaningless because total global emissions will still continue to go up.

edit: thanks for clarifying btw and here is trends in total global emissions found on the page https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...