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How did you cherry pick that list? The actual top countries per capita from your source are:

  Qatar 40.1
  Trinidad & Tobago 37.78
  Kuwait 34.24
  Netherlands Antilles 23.55
  Brunei Darussalam 22.96
  United Arab Emirates 22.31
  Aruba 21.59
  Luxembourg 21.34
  ...
But looking at the total, rather than per-capita, carbon emissions makes more sense if we want to actually cut total carbon emissions.

Here is the list of top CO2 emitting countries:

  China 10,877.2
  United States 5,107.4
  India 2,454.8
  Russia 1,764.9
  Japan 1,320.8
  Germany 796.5
  South Korea 673.3
  Iran 671.5
  ...
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... , which cites the source https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/fossil-co2-emissions...


But then why look at total per year. Calculate the cumulative total since the start of the industrial revolution. That number is relevant for the situation we're in today.


It's somewhat useful to know how much we did in the us but you can't go back in time and change what the us did from 1900-2000. I don't get the point. We can all only change what we emit now and into the future.


It would be fair if the ones who did all the pollution (and also got the benefits from it) would clean the mess up now.




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