Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
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.
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Agreed, which is what I was saying. The north is skewed in the same way that the southern states would be skewed with running air conditioners all summer. Longer commute times in cities like LA, NY, Chicago, etc. Traffic there is way worse than anything we experience. Other than Toronto and Vancouver our populations likely spend way less time in a car then the 10x bigger population to the south.
And there's less than 0.3% of our population up north. Hardly going to skew the numbers substantially to give us anything to argue that our emissions per capita should get a reprieve from anyone else's. That said, why are you debating this? Shouldn't you be telling the eskimos they should be building multifamily igloos, sharing the same fishing holes, and having sustainable communities that don't need commuter planes vs. excusing them for needing diesel generation?
Yeah China and the USA might use the oil that we supply, but in turn we buy the crap they make with it. If you want to get into that debate you're going to have to show co2 emissions based on a net import/export basis and make it a fair comparison.