Comment by evandale | Hacker News Reader

Comment by evandale | Hacker News Reader

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I want to make this perfectly clear: The Canadian people are not responsible for the per-capita emissions of the country; we have no control over it and there's nothing citizens can do to reduce our footprint.

Canada's high emissions per-capita are a combination of its disproportionately large industry, 2nd largest landmass in the world, a large part of the country being a frozen wasteland, and its miniscule population.

Per-capita is useless in practice because a factory pumping out 1000000 units in Canada will look bad per-capita.

A factory pumping 1000000 units in China looks great per-capita.

It's not a fair comparison at all and if Canada was 0.0 emissions per-capita it would make 0 difference in the world because China outputs the equivalent to a Canada in a short time frame.

Canada's energy is the cleanest in the entire world by a massive margin. Ontario is 100% non-emitting energy. Canada never gets any credit for any of this, ever, while European countries still buying natural gas from Russia are lauded as trailblazers in clean energy.

Canada does far far more than its fair share for the rest of the world and it doesn't deserve to be singled out due to an idiotic statistic that is only useful for comparing local phenomenons.

> A factory pumping 1000000 units in China looks great per-capita.

A country with a relatively small population and little heavy industry looks great in absolute figures.

> we have no control over it and there's nothing citizens can do to reduce our footprint.

Didn't know Canada had entirely electrified transport.

> Canada does far far more than its fair share

The fair share is net negative carbon emissions for every country and an increasing amount of wilderness across all biomes. A group of polities which are the greatest environmental vandals in all human history is an incredibly low bar against which to measure achievement.

Decarbonising the economy requires investment. Canada is one of the richest nations in the world.

> Per-capita is useless in practice because a factory pumping out 1000000 units in Canada will look bad per-capita.

> A factory pumping 1000000 units in China looks great per-capita.

A factory pumping out 1000000 units, each earning $1k, will net each Canadian $26.

The same factory in China will net each Chinese citizen 71 cents.

You think you found the unfairness of the comparison, but in essence, you're just saying "But Canada is rich and China is poor! That's why Canadians get to pollute more than Chinese per capita!"

Your argument isn't going to persuade many people.

> We have no control over it and there's nothing citizens can do to reduce our footprint.

That's just not true. You can buy cars with better fuel efficiency. (Just say no to SUV.) You can buy electric cars. You can avoid air travel. You can vote for better public transportation policy, so more people take trains not cars. These are big items and they matter.

You're mixing energy and electricity, not the same thing. There's still plenty of oil being burnt by transport among others Canada also has the disporportionate levels of consumption typical to the West, no praise there.

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