Quote:
Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0
I don’t know if land area matters that much as a meaningful metric.
Ultimately, it is emissions that we want to reduce, so total emissions matter, but it is possible that a country could meet a global standard per capita and still produce far more emissions than any other country because of shear numbers. This partially describes China. We need China to improve, but too often people in the US point to China when they should be pointing into a mirror.
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Land area should matter though. The planet has a relatively fixed area, but the human population is constantly changing, and shifting (number and location). If we keep basing our metrics on population, that is yet another variable challenging our optimization efforts. Per capita is only effective if your primary goal is to measure some metric relative to the individuals in a group. With climate change, we don't really GAF about individuals, we care (or at least should care) about optimizing the entire civilization for what the planet can handle.
Basically, the target per capita emissions should be subservient to the optimization of a country's strategy to meet an emissions target determined by the amount of Earth it is responsible for. In that way, you replace a variable national target with a generally fixed national target, allowing better planning and execution of the optimized strategy. This also allows greater freedom in devising said strategy.
In layman's terms, if you keep moving the goalposts every time somebody kicks the ball, everyone who took the time to aim carefully is going to miss.