No they are not. Birth rates have declined in India and China as well. However, all those people have to live ssomewhere. So, per capita emissions are more than fair and accurate. If that is not the right way to look at it then how about the US (second highest level of total CO2 emissions behind China) reduce it to the level of, say, Lichtenstein.

Maybe, but the current growth rate in CO2 + the large populations don't seem encouraging!: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-change-co2?count...

I mean...hopefully eventually ..

The planet may not care about fariness, but developed countries can do.

As a compensation for years of above average pollution, let them spend some decades in negative pollution (removing carbon from the atmosphere) to offset for all the suffering they have caused.

>China and soon India are the two countries that make me feel hopeless about controlling CO2

A helpful guide to assuage your apprehensions

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/india/

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/2020-07-30/

(USA data is incomplete for July 2021)

I am worried about China too, but as an Indian, I can assure you that everyone in India is climate conscious and the govt. is doing its best to reach its pledges and targets.

Anecdotal data, but i saw more solar rooftops in India in 1 month than I have seen in Canada/US in last 5 years

Statistically, China is leading the world in solar installations and EV car sales. Admittedly sales figures don't always align with political will/intent, but China seems pretty far along the path towards controlling CO2 adjusting for how much of their footprint is externalized carbon from producing goods for the West, and the "bootstrap factor" that they are on a far faster growth/adoption curve overall than most of the West.

For what it is worth, politically on the record, China has some very strong goals stated, and those installation/sales statistics indicate some aggression towards meeting them.

I think a lot of the worry about China is misplaced for one reason or another. (Especially with the shell game of especially US politics outsourcing so much industrial work to China and then directly blaming China for emissions that should rightfully be accounted for in US corporation bottom lines and blaming China for the outsourcing in the first place as if it weren't done precisely because of that carbon emissions shell game and the gross [fig., lol] profits on the bottom line.)

Maybe this makes sense, but I dont know much about it.

Are the near future targets for India "up, but not that much" ?

Is that because of some per-capita quota?

This actually is some bit of good news about India, and thanks for the information.

India seems to be one of the countries with most to lose from climate change. If the wheat growing belt migrates north sufficiently - as it may - India will have enormous problems feeding itself.

Problem is not with the belt, problem is with water storage (aka snow caps) in Himalayas. If they are gone, then desertification and mass starvation is pretty much assured

All countries suffer because we all share the same atomsphere