[myrmidon]

There is literally no charitable interpretation of this point.

How much of a problem any individuals CO2 emissions are is completely decoupled from what nation they live in, or how many people live in that nation specifically.

If you hypothetically split up Asia or the US into 100 smaller countries then local emissions are not suddenly more (or less) of a problem than the are now (duh).

And of course more people have more of an influence on global outcomes.

This whole argument makes about as much sense as demanding that black people in Europe should not pay any income tax, because the total tax income from black people in Europe is very low, and "national budget does not care about per capita".

[wing-_-nuts]

This is so disingenuous. Individuals do not build coal power plants, utilities (and therefore, governments) do. India and China are continuing to build fossil fuel power generation. Global warming does not care about 'fairness', global warming cares about co2 PPM in the atmosphere. When we address climate change, we have to do so at the government level, or we mine as well not bother.

The whole idea that we should look at 'emissions per capita' or 'historical emissions' in the interest of fairness is simply giving a license to governments to kill genuinely poor people in the third world.

[myrmidon]

> India and China are continuing to build fossil fuel power generation

Power plants are not built for specific national governments, they are built because individual people need and use the energy. More people => more powerplants (number of governments is completely irrelevant, this is purely a per-capita thing).

> When we address climate change, we have to do so at the government level

Yes. For example by setting somewhat coherent CO2/capita emission targets.

> Global warming does not care about 'fairness'

Irrelevant, because anyone affected does.

If you want a global reduction in emissions, how would you ever convince a poorer nation (like India) to change anything while your own citizens are jet-travelling around the globe multiple times per year?

It is obviously much easier and more effective to reduce emissions by limiting a family to a single cruise vacation per year (or only two cars) than to convince 10 rice farmers to stop firing their oven for heat during winter...

If rich nations can not get their emissions even close to a sustainable level, why would any developing nation sacrifice growth, wealth or anything, really, to make the attempt?

[wing-_-nuts]

I never said rich nations shouldn't cut their emissions. If I were king, I'd enact a heavy carbon tax, and I'd tell every country I traded with that they could either do the same, or face tariffs and sanctions weighted by emissions that would have basically the same effect on their economy. I'd also insist that the institute the same tariffs and sanctions on economies they trade with.

All of a sudden, you'd have the world's short term self interest aligned with solving the long term problem.

[queenkjuul]

China is building more renewables than anyone else. They produce less co2 per capita despite doing like 80% of all the manufacturing.

You simply can't point fingers at them.

India, fine. But it's the US driving the planet off a cliff first and foremost