[fjwater]

I don't think that's fair to say; the USA's CO2 emissions per capita are roughly 150% of China's, and the average Canadian emits more than 7x as much as an Indian citizen.

The entire EU produces only about half of the USA's total emissions, despite having a population of over 100 million more people.

[O5vYtytb]

Fair? Maybe not, but IMO it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is gross emissions. The effects of a warming planet will not be fair. We should be looking to reduce/eliminate emissions wherever they are happening.

[fjwater]

I don't think it's fair to look only at gross emissions by country. How can we demand that India drastically cut its emissions when its per capita output is already so low? Forcing reductions there effectively caps their living standards while developed nations continue to enjoy the benefits of much higher individual carbon footprints.

[vrganj]

China's actively fixing the problem. [0]

Why aren't we?

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/china-co2-emis...

[LegionMammal978]

U.S. and EU CO₂ emissions have been actively dropping for the last ~20 years [0]. (Of course, it's different question how quickly they ought to be dropping.)

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

[teamonkey]

That’s because we’ve outsourced so much of our manufacturing to China. Of course ours is going down while theirs is going up.

[triceratops]

Good. They should keep doing it and faster.

[tock]

Fairness matters because the only way we can collectively decide to reduce emissions is if people everywhere feel its fair.

[tzs]

> The only thing that matters is gross emissions

Which is why, unless you can come up with a good argument that some people have some kind of divine or natural right to a bigger share of whatever global emissions budget we decide we need to stick to, per capita is the correct way to compare countries.

[52-6F-62]

Lol. Not exactly an apt comparison.

"Average" Canadian. A lot of the population lives in a climate where half the year more energy is required to survive the climate. And the population is exponentially smaller than the United States, India, or China.

That's like calling out the guy in the mountains burning a campfire to stay warm at night when the guy sleeping on the beach in Hawaii requires none.

Point being, brand new account, if we want solutions it needs to be done without such angling or it all reduces to absurdities and jabs instead of cooperation. It needs to be realistic in terms of where people are being absurdly wasteful, but also sympathetic that we do not all face the same circumstances.

It's a hole and we don't get out by digging downward.

[fjwater]

I agree that climate is a factor, but the survival argument only goes so far. Finland, Sweden and Norway face similar sub-zero winters but maintain a higher standard of living with less than half the per capita emissions of Canada.