09-08-2020, 08:04 PM
(09-08-2020, 07:39 PM)dtkvictim Wrote:(09-08-2020, 07:25 PM)plam Wrote: 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.
Is it unfair? Wouldn't it be unfair for a country that manages a sustainable population to be forced to lower per capita emissions every time other countries let their population growth explode?
I'm not aware of any countries that are rich and also have a high birth rate. The Wikipedia chart on income and fertility identifies two sort of outliers: Israel and Oman. But most of the higher-GDP countries have sub-2 fertility.
You set the allowed total carbon emissions at say 1990 levels (this is hard) and then you peg to total emissions, not per capita. That takes care of your concern naturally, I think.
(09-08-2020, 07:39 PM)dtkvictim Wrote:(09-08-2020, 07:25 PM)plam Wrote: 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.
The fertility rate in Canada is far below replacement level, so unless I am misunderstanding something, our growth is entirely immigration. We even have the option to enter population decline if we desired. Of course I understand we have a ponzi scheme economy that would collapse without population growth though.
For the record, I'm not advocating for a specific position here... I'm just here to ask questions.
1.5. I guess that it depends on what you mean by "far". There's questions of the economy and also of who would pay for pensions.
Presumably if people are moving to Canada they think their lives would be better in Canada. And I think Canada benefits from newcomers.