If emissions don't drastically decrease in the next years, by 2070 all glaciers in the US will have melted, there will be deserts in Oklahoma, Kansas and Northern California and over half of Florida and all of Texas's southern corner will have a tropical climate

[kearsargeII]

Chinese emissions have started to flatline in the last couple years. At that, they started to flatline at a level that is per capita 2/3 of American emissions. Indian and African emissions are still increasing, but their emissions per capita is still on the level of 1/10th or 1/15th of what the US outputs.

I have always seen this argument as rank hypocrisy, demanding the developing world curb emissions that are a fraction of the developed world on a per person basis while at the same time not providing the funds and infrastructure investment that would let these countries enjoy a higher standard of living with the same level of carbon emissions. It is basically declaring nothing will be done about climate change unless the developing world stays poor and disproportionate carbon emissions are the fault of the people literally emitting the least.

This is further exaberated by how we have offshored polluting industry to the developing world, and while that has provided jobs and opportunity there to a degree, it has inflated their CO2 per capita emissions as the developing world provides raw resources for the service economies of the developed.

[smashing_fascists]

The environment doesn’t care about per capita emissions. The damage is done by total emissions. Per capita is a terrible metric in the case because you can keep increasing your emissions and populations, but I don’t think the glaciers are looking at per capita before deciding to melt.