https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Per capita carbon emissions of US are 8 times as of India and 2 times as of China. And which country is withdrawing from the Paris agreement?
> Measuring per capita carbon
being better...
It is not clear to me why this makes sense.
If person A drive 2 miles per day in an SUV, and another person B drives 100 miles per day in a sedan -- person B pollutes more.
Why would driver A considered to pollute more ?
Meanwhile, “all miles driven are created equal” said no one ever.
In my view, measuring delta in total greenhouse gasses produced, would a better measure for international accords, and their subsequent corruption-free enforcement.
This is why I brought the pollution-per-mile vs pollution-produced analogy.
With regards to > "The amount of emissions correlate strongly to that pursuit of happiness at least for now..."
I think, you are also averaging out to-per-capita that, might not be appropriate...
Say there is energy-demanding and mineral demanding manufacture process, that causes deforestation, pollutes rivers, mows down beautiful mountains to get coal, produces lots of green house gasses.
You are claiming that this benefits, at least, economically, 'every' per-capita person on that country.
But if same manufacture used more renewable energy, and produced more expensive goods. Would the 'per-capita' be worst off?
Perhaps it would not be. Right?
In other words, we really need to measure what that manufacture is doing.
And that's why I think measuring changes in pollution (due to changes in policy of a given country), and changes in preservation of natural habitats -- is a much more effective way to measure policies of governments.
Another way to look at it is this way:
Performance indicators should be relevant to the individuals or institutions that are actually accountable for the execution of what's being measured.
In this case, we are measuring government policies, not individuals. Therefore dividing per capita, should not be used as 'first-order' measure.
Also, deciding to not do something positive because other people are still doing something negative somewhere else is a shitty argument.
This is also against HN guidelines
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>" When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
"