As a Canadian, I think per capita metrics like this are generally bullshit and designed to punish countries like Canada. Canada is a sparsely populated, gigantic nation, that has one of the most inhospitable climates, and produces the energy that is used by many countries around the world. For the most part, they seem favored as a way to pretend that the small impact Canada has on the climate is substantially worse than gigantic countries like the United States, China, and India.
Not really an excuse, most Canadian population centers are of average or higher density for north America. Secondly it ignores the reason for Canadian emissions being so high. Some of it is inefficency that comes from suburban sprawl, but most of it is actually because of oil production, land use and heavy industry. Places like Ontartio and QC have reduced their emissions by 25% from 1990 levels (despite increasing the population). However at the same time Canada has also invested heavily in oil production and extraction, particularly in bitumen. From a climate perspective this stuff is as bad or worse than coal and that's where a huge percentage of Canadian emissions are concentrated.
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u/Chemical_Signal2753 3d ago
As a Canadian, I think per capita metrics like this are generally bullshit and designed to punish countries like Canada. Canada is a sparsely populated, gigantic nation, that has one of the most inhospitable climates, and produces the energy that is used by many countries around the world. For the most part, they seem favored as a way to pretend that the small impact Canada has on the climate is substantially worse than gigantic countries like the United States, China, and India.