Grand River Transit

[plam]

I sometimes wonder about this, how valid per-capita emissions are as a measurement of responsibility. If Canada set a specific limit on emissions per capita, it would be fine for a businessperson to make frequent flights as long as someone else (or many other people) in the country have below average emissions to balance it out. But how about globally? Should one country be allowed to have higher per capita emissions if another country is below average? What about emissions per land area? What is the correct measurement? Do we not care about total emissions, just per capita?

If the pope flew a private jet around all the time, the Vatican would have massive per capita emissions, but it would probably be fairly sustainable. So, maybe governments regulating emissions should be taking the size of the population they govern into context. If a country specifically chooses not to grow their population (a luxury most developed countries have available to them, and developing countries could do more on this front though it's more complicated...), but maintains their per capita emissions, then they are doing better than a country that lowers their per capita emissions but grows their population at an even faster rate.

Now of course, Canada wants to grow it's populate at a rate I strongly disagree with, as our population size is probably the single most effective tool we have to lower our total emissions.

International carbon markets are supposed to make things work out on average. The tricky part is setting what the initial budgets are. In the end, though, we care about total emissions, but thinking about per capita numbers is one measure of fairness that people can point at. It's absolutely unfair that Canada should get to have a higher per-capita CO2 budget than India, but the way forward is not clear.

Population growth in Canada is 60% migration and 40% births. So for that 60% we are mostly importing people from countries with lower CO2 emissions and converting them to have Canadian-level CO2 emissions. The 40% probably is less than replacement. To a first approximation, fewer people will also mean less CO2, but also worse for the economy as it is currently configured.