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Comment by rtx | Hacker News Reader

You are right we shouldn't be focusing on on per capita emission.

The problem with not doing per capita is that you valuing each person differently arbitrarily basis their nationality...

You can for example combine EU into one entity and say they pollute a lot. Or split china/india/US into 50 countries and say they don't contribute much individually.

In effect favouring being born lucky.. in any random sample of the world population you have 33% chance of being born in just 2 countries . Do these people get fair representatation in any international forum ? It is either 1 vote per country or powerfull ones have all of it.

Landmass also is not effective measure . You will end up with Australia, Canada and Russia driving the agenda

Pop density has more to do with ability to grow food and energy efficiency of food consumption - comparing pop density and talking about over population has to factor that in saying china and india are overcrowded is not a sensible argument(they are over populated but not to extent people think) .

We need fresh perspective on how we see the world , arbitrary national boundaries , Mercator projections and biased schooling makes our world view very distorted

All of the above applies to the US as well . State borders are arbitrary. People in Pop dense centers like california do not get even the 10th of the representatation as say Wyoming.

California could be 8th largest country in terms of economic output and has a pop larger most countries in the world yet people living there do not have a say proportional to their impact in domestic or international politic is that fair ?

ok, seems like we are looking at this from different perspectives. You look at it from fairness to people and I look at it from fairness to earth. I argue that because pollution is so concentrated within the area, it destroys that part of earth more, this does not include anything to do with fairness towards people. But you are absolutely right if you look at it from perspective of being fair towards people. I am not at all against helping people though, I totally support destroying parts of the environment if it reduces overall suffering and progresses wellbeing of individuals in need. But my initial argument was that, social issues aside, looking specifically from environmental impact, per capita is not a good way to judge impact of the country.

I agree per capita/ per country is not the best way. Ultimately it comes to each individual don't you think ? . What does each every one of us directly or indirectly contribute . Any other grouping like country is always going to be arbitrary.. we need to each individually, in local, regional, national government, vote for the people who care and do the best we can irrespective what any one is doing or not. We need make them reduce too yes, but getting our shit together should be the priority

You are correct environment is not reason we should be worried . it is about the people, not the planet. 99% of the all species are already extinct one more large scale extinction event while terrible is not the end of life on this planet and the planet has seen far worse, life will survive long after we are gone. Sea level raise will adversely 60 % of the human population who live in the coast many of whom are poor. Changing weather patterns and climate change will affect the developing countries far more than first world countries who will have the resources to manage the effects . There are whole island countries that will disappear within the turn of the century. This is why developing countries are in very touch spot, they will need to balance both development of basic services and also find a meaningful solution to the problem.

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