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Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

Why is this relevant? The Earth doesn't care about per capita emissions. Only total emissions affect global warming.

It’s only fair to compare countries based on a per capita basis. Otherwise you are letting some people pollute much more than others because of imaginary lines on a globe

Is being "fair" more important than stopping global warming? And besides, most pollution comes from industry, not from individuals.

Being fair is a sensible way of dealing with a limited shared resource in a moral way. Often the only way to enforce unfair allocation is violence.

Industry is made up of and serves individuals, so it's not very difficult to assign its emissions to individuals.

Since the emissions originate from China, and only the CCP is capable of reducing them I see no value in defining emissions as a per-capita number. The CCP likely cannot be shamed in reversing course. At least they did nothing significant the last few years.

fairness is of zero relevance to this discussion

...looking at emissions per-capita is unfair to resource-rich countries that have reeled in their population growth and pulled themselves out of the mud. /s

Neither do the earth care about per nationality emissions. In my opinion Per capita emission is better metrics compare to per nationality to improve things.

Earth doesn’t care about country boundaries either. Average person in US contributes more CO2 than average person in China.

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