They're not meant to be per capita. If energy policy is based on CO2 emissions then the absolute numbers matter, not per capita numbers. The laws of physics don't care how many people benefited from an action, they happen based on total volumes and weights.

You're obviously not talking about energy policy or laws of physics. You're making moralistic judgements and anthropomorphizing a nation-state

If you wanna make comparisons (I don't, you do), per capita obviously matters. There's no reason why you should be holding members of one nation state to a stricter standard than members of another.

It's not the members of the nation state, it's the government. If one government is emitting more CO2 than any other, that government is the one that most needs to change policy because a policy change there is the place it would make the most difference.

Suppose there were only two countries in the world. One had 99.99% of the world's population and the other emitted twice as much CO2 per capita. Which one is most in need of changing if you want to make an impact on the problem?

!!! Policy will always be based on per capita and indirectly also on cumulative emissions.

Does it matter that much of “China’s” emissions are caused by manufacturing stuff for “environmentally conscious” US and Europe? Or is it “different” and I “don’t understand”?

It's possible to manufacture stuff without emitting CO2, so what matters is who is in charge of the choice of how it gets manufactured, because that's who has to change it.

Is it? News to me. Try to manufacture anything physical without emitting CO2. Not doable.

You can literally manufacture things by hand. What CO2 is being emitted by someone who makes furniture from wood with hand tools?

Large scale factory equipment will, of course, run on electricity, but electricity can be generated from solar/wind/nuclear/hydro.

Whatever you’re making is going to require materials, the manufacturing of which emits CO2, and transportation of your product will also require CO2, as will the rest of the sales chain to the consumer.

But more to the point, because we’re quibbling over an irrelevant issue: I contend that it is unfair to attribute all of China’s emissions to China, and if we’re being honest much of it is attributable to the West which deindustrialized itself and instead makes almost everything there.

> Whatever you’re making is going to require materials, the manufacturing of which emits CO2

This is circular logic. "Manufacturing emits CO2 because manufacturing emits CO2."

> transportation of your product will also require CO2

It doesn't. It's possible to use electric trains and trucks and electricity doesn't have to be generated from burning fossil fuels.

> I contend that it is unfair to attribute all of China’s emissions to China, and if we’re being honest much of it is attributable to the West which deindustrialized itself and instead makes almost everything there.

Attribution is boring. Do China want to do the manufacturing in a way that doesn't emit CO2, or do they want to let someone else do the manufacturing so the someone else can do it in a way that doesn't emit CO2? Those are the options.

That's a ridiculous statement. You have to normalize by population, because if you don't, you end up comparing countries with thousands of people to countries with hundreds of millions of people. Of course a billion people are going to emit more CO2 than a thousand people.

You might as well compare an individual person to the entire US, and then declare that that individual person is going a great job at combating the greenhouse effect. John Smith is doing 300 million times better than the US!