Perhaps more worrying than this change is the recent focus on expanding China's coal plants [1]. China already now is responsible for 45% of the global coal electricity. Just look at this diagram [0]. And with their one-belt-one-road initiative, they are building coal plants around the world.
China is still only a moderate emitter per capita, though it's caught up to Europe in recent years. Considering the wealth disparity it's a little hard to criticize.
The earth doesn't care, so to speak, about whether it's per capita or not, it only cares about the total global output.
The consequence of having 1.4 billion people in your society, is that you don't get to pollute at the rate of a nation with one million people that outputs 10x more pollution per capita.
Is that unfair? No. I don't think per capita equality of pollution is the most important factor in this. As a society China has to bear the consequences of their immense population and its impact on the earth. Pre-emptively I'll note this isn't a defense of any other nation's high per capita pollution output level.
Globally we have to take the China output very seriously, and we can afford to not be nearly so concerned about the 10x output of the one million person nation because it's not a dire threat to the planet (which isn't the same thing as not caring about their output, it's a difference of one threatening human existence and the other not; I'm far more concerned about North Korea's nukes & missiles than the localized authoritarian militia activity in a tiny nation - even though they might both be reprehensible governments, one is far more dangerous).
> The consequence of having 1.4 billion people in your society, is that you don't get to pollute at the rate of a nation with one million people that outputs 10x more pollution per capita.
So if China were to split up into a whole bunch of separate countries, it would be acceptable for each of those countries to have a higher per capita pollution rate than is acceptable for current China?
As you noted, the Earth doesn't care. That's why per capita is the correct way to handle this. Otherwise, whether a given set of people producing a given level of pollution is acceptable changes depending on how you draw arbitrary political boundaries among those people.
Good argument, maybe it should be based on the area of land controlled by each nation? Population density or Tons of CO2 produced per square mile?
The problem with per capita policy is it encourages over population which makes the problem worse.
And China actually made effort in past to control that as well (One Child policy).
Only recently they relaxed it to avoid social side effects and unbalance in proportion between generations, and fertility rate is still bellow that of the USA (1.62 vs 1.80).
But what about the province of Sichuan? They have about the same population as Germany. Shouldn't they be allowed to pollute as much under your theory? After all, Germany is simply part of the EU.
You should read more Western media if you are under the impression that those countries aren't criticized as well. Particularly the "US official policy".
If the entire world would be emitting like europe or north america do, then we'd be so doomed. Even if europe by then would be zero carbon it wouldn't really matter.
Of course, being the historic polluters, we shouldn't point with fingers here. They do have a right to wealth like any other economy in the world. But I think that wealth + renewable energy sources are possible. China has giant deserts. The only real problem is energy storage, but until a good cheap solution is found, you could just use conventional sources until the night or if there's no sun.
All I'm saying is we shouldn't be pointing fingers. Expecting poor nations to stay in poverty by making sacrifices we refuse to is both unfair and won't work.
[0]: https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2019/01/23/coal-is...