Quote:
Originally Posted by ranchlandsselling
Yeah, but then we're unfairly subsidized with useless northern land that's uninhabited but lessens our responsibility. Ditto for Russia, USA and China. We could go ahead and be 10x worse polluters than the USA on a per capita basis but shrug it off because we're equal per land mass.
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Of course, if we're going to look at things on a per capita basis then the north becomes a burden - particularly fly-in, fly-out communities that run off generators and not efficient, modern power plants.
Really, Canada should be expected to have higher per-capita emissions than an average country of similar GDP, because of lower population density (more fuel transporting things and people) and cold climate (we require energy to heat our homes).
Furthermore, if we look at Alberta's carbon emissions on a population basis, we would appear to be gluttonous, wasteful pigs. But if we were to attribute the carbon emissions from the oil sands to the end users, it would paint a very different picture, and one that is arguably far more fair.
The point is that while emissions per capita is a much better metric than emissions per country, it's still a flawed way of looking at things.