If it wasn’t per capita, we’d just be looking at population size graphs. It is useful information and shows what is possible. We should be looking at metrics like CO2 per unit of gdp also. It’s not just people, it’s industry. Some of chinas emissions are really other countries emissions, offshored for China to produce. China profits from it, of course.

It matters.

The planet can sustain 10x more people if they live like people in India vs Saudi Arabia or UAE....

It's funny you want to focus on a factor of 5, though. Especially when they still come in dead last after a 5x increase. The average person on earth contributes about 4 tons of GHGs. First world nations are 4x-5x that.

So your complain is that the chart lacks a time axis, not that it's per-capita?

You're right. They're pushing the blame toward the people. As if the people of Saudi Arabia have any real say over industry choices.

Then why compare countries? Countries defined by arbitrary lines are just that. If you want to compare by arbitrary lines, then correct comparison would be to to compare a District in India and entire Australia. You could lower emissions of any country by splitting it into smaller pieces. You can reduce Australia's emissions even more by declaring that every Australian is a separate country, every David, John, Peter in Australia will have many times lower emissions than entire country of India, consisting 1.3 billion people.

I mean, Aussies are punching above their weight with emissions still while they have made incredible progress on the energy transition and generally have good policies.

One notable thing Australia needs to work on is coal use which is high, in the coming years this will start to drop off massively since Australia is still the lucky country when considering the next generation of energy production.

The graph is good, and soon you'll be able to see Australia drop down the list of countries in a very satisfying way.

Even this type of data is overly decontextualized without considering cumulative (not annual) emissions since the industrial revolution (globally), proportion of corporate contribution and off shoring. Per capita is important too.

With regard to developing nations, emissions will go up as people get pulled out of poverty and have lifestyles more like people in developed nations. It's hard to ask them not to pursue that or to delay it without coming across as hypocritical. Especially since developed nations are responsible for 50% of cumulative emissions, historically, despite being 20% of the global population (and have a higher quality of life so show for it).

Now with the US/Israel's war in Iran more nations in Asia will be burning coal due to oil supply constraints. It's easy to show a graph blaming those nations for resorting to that but several are already rationing gasoline (Americans would lose their minds lol) and the people are absolutely struggling for it.

This is the type of decontextualization that Western nations employ to pressure nations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia and its often is not received well, understandably.

Ah, fair point fair point.