dice wrote:with a quarter of their population. we still pollute at double the per capita rate that china does. and it was the US, not china, that pulled out of the paris agreement
Using per capita numbers also masks that one of the huge problems for the world is the population of China and India.
the US polluted a lot in building it's economy in the industrial revolution and beyond. now the effects on the planet are obvious and we're asking china to restrict their emissions just as THEIR economy is growing rapidly. they SHOULD, of course, but in a way it's grossly unfair
Yes and No. Part of the problem with this comparison is that we didn't know the results of what we were doing at the time and the other part is that we hadn't yet developed a lot of technology to avoid doing it at the time. We both know the affects now and have other reasonable options now, so it isn't really an apples to apples comparison.
There is probably some unfairness to it, I think we continued to do bad things (even today) and well after we knew the affects and had alternatives that were pricier, but China isn't starting in the same spot we were 100 years ago, they could be much cleaner than they are fairly trivially, same with India. Of course, the whole world will pay the increased cost of that, not just China, as we rely on China for cheap goods.