Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
The beauty of the hypocrisy of environmentalists is the use of "per capita" stats. The earth doesn't care how many people live in Canada vs. China. It only cares how much damage is being done to it. We in Canada need to improve, there is no doubt about it. But China has much, much farther to go, and it is hard to take the entire green movement seriously when the world simply won't hold the worst polluters accountable.
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If not per capita stats, then what should be used? The arbitrary divisions that are political borders?
Keep in mind that China makes up about 20% of 'the world' that you're talking about. Canada makes up a measly 0.5% of that population. Even the US, which is the most populous country of the developed world is still less than 5%, while China and India together make up a good 37% of the Earth's population. All of Europe and North America together is still smaller than China at only 19%.
It's a matter of people trying to move up in the world, and a matter of only a small portion of the world living in states of development that the rest of the world want. It's not so nice sitting in on a pile of money in an extremely privileged part of the world, consuming disproportionately large amounts of resources and asking for your variety of products to be made more cheaply while telling the much larger part of the world population, who live in much harder conditions, that they can't consume resources and make a mess in order to earn what you have while producing your goods.