(Note: the above does not include the amount of energy embodied in imported goods, so if anything the energy of rich countries is even higher)
Transportation in the US will have a larger CO2 footprint than other countries for a very long time simply by virtue of size and geographic population dispersion. Similarly, the vast herds of ungulates aren't going away no matter what we do with agriculture, it is a critical and natural part of the North American ecosystem.
What constitutes a reasonable CO2 footprint per capita has a significant dependency on local conditions. Some regions have intrinsically higher CO2 footprints than others, ceterus paribus. In a world where everyone is trying to optimize for CO2 footprint (not the case today), a fair result will still have large differences across regions.
You don’t mean the 95 million cattle of the US meat and milk industry? Those are very unnatural, and a significant contribution to AGW.
It may be a smaller herd, but it will be a very large herd nonetheless. That aside, at no point in the foreseeable future will people stop eating meat and dairy, so total elimination is a bit of a moot point.
[1] eg https://qz.com/791865/climate-change-charting-the-extraordin...
> Select metric to plot
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> RuntimeError: table_data_to_plot could not be resolved
:-(
Western countries have lower population densities than many Asian countries. On one hand these are richer countries that maybe could afford the bill.
On the other hand this is also a tax for having a lower birth rate that could have unintended consequences. Like raising poverty levels, or pro-imigration or pro-child policies. With enough economic incentive to grow the population, the population will be grown via government policies, exactly what happened in many countries post WW2.
The other issue I'm seeing is that developed countries export a lot of goods and services, being efficient at it. Just as an example, agriculture in Holland is extremely efficient. Raising prices in Holland due to CO₂ emissions will move some of that production locally elsewhere in the EU, possibly yielding greater CO₂ emissions overall. This may be good for local farmers, I'm all for eating produce grown locally, but not necessarily for the environment.
Basically some countries are exporting much of their pollution and by imposing limits per country some of that pollution might get worse when moved locally.
I agree that "per capita" is probably the best we have, it's unfair to impose harsher restrictions on developing countries, given that developed countries yielded much worse emissions in the 20th century. Since 1960 we've had great progress in eliminating extreme poverty across the world. If that progress continues, we can expect a flattening population level, which is already happening.
But in calculating allowed emissions per country, it isn't so clear cut and I hope all variables are taken into consideration.
https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#how-has-t...
the decline of children mirrors the decline in poverty for the last 50 years and at record lows. If you look at countries, there are many differences, but high or low poverty, the correlation persists.
I recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness
But obviously the earth is comprised of sovereign states, and in order to collaborate you often need to convince those sovereign states that treatment is fair. Given that, if you want to adjust emissions by some divisor, I'd adjust it by land area. Land area is finite on earth. That means that there is some value of CO2 output / m^2 that is sustainable for the planet. That number is consistent. That number applies globally. That number can be a target for everyone. It also can't be faked – some "unreliable" country can't say "hey, global body, you think our population is 1B but it's actually 1.2B, so we get to pollute more". You can't fudge land area like that (there might be some marginal ability to do so, but obviously it is less feasible than with per capita numbers). This has the additional benefit of aligning priorities against worsening conditions in order to incentivize action now. Global warming is causing rising sea levels, which in turn means that countries are losing land area. That means that every year that global warming worsens, your quota will actually decrease.
Meanwhile, population is not finite. If you say to a country as part of an agreement to "get your CO2 output down to this level per capita", then it is a very real possibility that this country's population grows to an extent where that number you used last year is no longer small enough to stave off serious global warming. And that is the purpose of all this, no?
Obviously carrots and sticks will be necessary for any agreement to be effective (until it gets really bad), but either way I think emissions/unit land area as the line in the sand makes more sense than emissions/per capita.
An even better metric would probably be "emissions/unit arable farmland", as it gives weight to both land area and population, but obviously that is much more difficult to establish / less likely to stay static.
If Russia started consciously farming carbon sinks across Siberia, they could burn tires in St. Petersburg, too.
Japan and Holland could farm algae and plankton in their oceanic EEZ, I suppose.
Yes, there are obviously efficiency gains from cities. The whole problem is that those gains are not worth a densely packed cities capacity to just have more people, because the earth / global warming doesn't care about your efficiency, it cares about absolute numbers.
But people are not an abstract concept. With or without countries, people need to eat, sleep, wear clothes, get entertainment, have devices, all of which emit carbon per capita. Saying that monaco and India should emit similar carbon makes absolutely zero sense.
People in the developed world simply can't sustain their energy intensive life style if we want to reduce carbon emissions.
If somehow we ended on a per country stats, it will simply encourage creation of fake countries. A country can split in 100, create a federation like EU, but more stronger to join those countries and keep business as usual.
Per land area might be a better metric with some tweaks.
And yes, at the end of the day I think stopping climate change is more important than "who owns which piece of land", so if countries were struggling that hard to stay under their consumption limits then it could very well be worth some land changing hands.
It feels like the leakage current of civilization is too high, at least for western economies in how much co2 they produce while not producing anything. Great if running at some rate, but they aren't clockless and can't scale down. Statically scheduled instead of dynamic.
Per capita also in theory create perverse incentives. A rich country with high pollution per capita could anex a poor country and magically reduce their per capita pollution. Having a bunch of people under the same rule, but separated and segregated, should not impact the responsibility of reducing carbon emission.
If can't use absolute numbers since those benefits developed countries, and we can't use per capita since those benefits countries with large economic inequality, we will just have to find a third way to measure it.
US, alas, is at 16t/year, though decreasing. Overall contribution: 330M * 16 = 5B t/year.
Now let's watch how the 6 billion people that did not exist circa 1900 catch up in emissions with the high energy regimen that characterizes 'western middle class' lifestyle. Let's lowball at 5t/year/capita. Overall contribution: 6000M * 5 = 30B t/year. Earth as we know it will not survive that.
And that's before we factor in that population is still booming, both globally and, through global migration, in US.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-by-world...
That also solves the unseen "import goods" CO2 emissions problem.
A measurement that says China is the problem but not Huabei, Dongbei, Huadong, Zhongnan, Xinan, or Xibei, is wonky.
A measurement that says the EU emits too much carbon but France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Poland don't, is also wonky.
If you start from a premise that each human has an equal right to emit carbon as any other, regardless of which country they're born in, then you naturally get per-capita measures as a result. An absolute measure implies that each country has an equal right to emit carbon, but since countries are fluid and artificial constructs, that results in some pretty weird consequences, like each person in Britain being allowed to burn more gasoline if Scotland leaves the UK. Growing up in times of stability it might seem like countries are concrete and unchangeable, but borders move and countries appear and disappear all the time, and an international law that only applied to the top emitter would likely be enough pressure to cause that country to redefine itself as an informal federation of multiple states.