this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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That’s a misleading statement designed to deflect attention from worse countries.
We have very low population density compared to other countries. So our pollution per km is extremely low. While countries like India and china are much much higher
Per capita is a much better metric than per km
Kind of. But by that argument, we could improve things by increasing the birth rate.
No. Being a better measurement does not indicate to it being a perfect one.
Er, per capita means that increasing the population de facto decreases the ratio, unless the pollution increases as well. What are you saying “no” to and why are you introducing “being perfect?” That’s two moved goalposts in one statement.
The goal is to reduce environmental pollutants. The way to do this is to measure the delta in pollution. Population doesn’t matter any more than landmass (and potentially slightly less).
I'm not introducing any goal posts. These are things assumable with common sense. "If a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a metric" applies in such case. For progress, the only thing that matters is the total amount going down---neither per km area nor per capita have any value in measuring meaningful progress. But they could provide a good snapshot of present impact of each country.
Per capita is a better snapshot because it measures impact of a citizen in the country. Per landmass isn't great because it ignores countries with outsized impacts.
Huh?
The solution to "too much pollution per person" is to have more people polluting"???
Are you serious?
I think you (and others) have misunderstood what I was saying — the metric can be gamed by having more people. Most of Canada’s pollution is industrial and won’t shift all that much by adding more people. The solution is to just call out all the polluting factors and reduce them, no matter which metric is being used to measure.
The problem isn’t the pollution to person ratio, it’s the pollution. The solution is for the entire country to pollute less.
Why do you feel pollution per km is an appropriate metric?
You can see the pollution from India and china from space. Or you could before Covid when it was making the news.
You can’t see any of Canada’s. From a distance you can see smog of the GTA and Vancouver’s lower mainland
I don’t think most people are trying to reduce emissions to improve the view of their region from space.
Most people are focusing on, you know, the carbon emissions which are heating the planet, and the downstream effects from the changes that incurs?
Emission levels per capita is absolutely a better metric than “the view from space”. It’s perhaps a bit misleading— should the emissions from China that go to making disposable shit for europe and North America be attributed to their production or our consumption? (Obviously China should own the fraction for their own domestic consumption regardless)
But yeah, the emissions per capita is a good metric even if my country doesn’t look good in it. Because even if you’re fooling yourself with this view from space nonsense you’re not fooling anyone else
We’re talking about global emissions here. Canada makes up a large portion of the globe. Per square km makes perfect sense.
The world doesn’t really care how many humans there are, but there’s a fixed amount of landmass*
*discounting sea level rise
That said, the important bit is overall impact. If Canada pumps CO2 into the atmosphere, burns the boreal forest, and releases the methane deposits in the permafrost and oceans, that’s a massive problem globally, and involves morethan just the petrochemicals we burn.
It matters when it’s the people and their activities causing the emissions. A bunch of unused land doesn't make the pollution that the people actually do where they live any less bad.
This is a truly bad take, it comes across as the most desperate attempt to minimize a problem that instead we deserve to look at head on
Saying that pollution delta is important is a bad take?
Canada needs to fix its pollution problems by curbing the pollution. ALL of it. Focusing on per capita minimizes part of that just as much as focusing on landmass.
Especially since massive amounts of Canada’s pollution happens out of sight of the majority of the population.
I’m going to honest and say that I really don’t understand what you’re getting at. Either you misunderstood what I’m saying, or i misunderstood you and still don’t understand; or both.
A proper accounting of the emissions generated in Canada is what’s important. Averaging our emissions down because of all our vast expanses of empty land is disingenuous at best and false propaganda at worst.
For industrial uses an ideal accounting would be look at who consumes the byproducts of those products. If we ship oil to the US we could allocate those emissions to the US and if China or India has emissions to serve our demand then we could be allocated this to us.
A consumption-based accounting in combination with the current per-capita accounting would give a decently accurate representation of where and why the emissions are occurring. Per-sq-km emissions have zero place in any reasonable discussion.
Sounds like both, because I think we’re both trying to make the same general point but getting caught up in each other’s wording, possibly because what we are trying to say is only loosely related. In the context you spelled out, I have no disagreement, but that’s not really what I thought I was originally responding to.