[gorwell]

For context, here are the top 10 biggest footprints

1. China 26.16%

2 United States 11.53%

3. India 7.69%

4. Russia 3.75%

5. Brazil 3.16%

6. Indonesia 3.15%

7. Japan 2.15%

8. Iran 2.06%

9. Saudi Arabia 1.60%

10. Canada 1.54%

The top 10 countries account for about ~60% of global CO₂ emissions.

[moefh]

That's not great context: China and India have huge populations, it's expected that they should be at the top.

Better context can be found here[1] (countries by emission per capita). It's still not great because it shows a lot of small countries at the top. For example: Palau is the first, but it has a population of a few thousand people, so their emissions are a rounding error when compared to other countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

[gorwell]

Per capita isn't the useful metric in this regard for the reason Palau illustrates. The climate cares about volume.

Per capita emissions is a way to assign relative sin by those who feel guilty about living large.

Bill Gates today, "This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.”

[free652]

Why? I would expect China to be at the top since it's #1 manufacturing country? But India is like behind Germany at (5).

How about GDP per emission? And that would make China way higher than US.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity

[almaight]

0.Earth 100%