Voilà, c’est fait. En ce 15 mars, le Canada a déjà consommé l’ensemble des ressources naturelles renouvelables que la Terre peut lui fournir en une année pour ne pas puiser dans ses réserves. Sortez les bulles… et jetez-les aux poubelles après en avoir bu une gorgée !
I think you (and others) have misunderstood what I was saying — the metric can be gamed by having more people. Most of Canada’s pollution is industrial and won’t shift all that much by adding more people. The solution is to just call out all the polluting factors and reduce them, no matter which metric is being used to measure.
The problem isn’t the pollution to person ratio, it’s the pollution. The solution is for the entire country to pollute less.
Er, per capita means that increasing the population de facto decreases the ratio, unless the pollution increases as well. What are you saying “no” to and why are you introducing “being perfect?” That’s two moved goalposts in one statement.
The goal is to reduce environmental pollutants. The way to do this is to measure the delta in pollution. Population doesn’t matter any more than landmass (and potentially slightly less).
I’m not introducing any goal posts. These are things assumable with common sense. “If a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a metric” applies in such case. For progress, the only thing that matters is the total amount going down—neither per km area nor per capita have any value in measuring meaningful progress. But they could provide a good snapshot of present impact of each country.
Per capita is a better snapshot because it measures impact of a citizen in the country. Per landmass isn’t great because it ignores countries with outsized impacts.
Kind of. But by that argument, we could improve things by increasing the birth rate.
Huh?
The solution to “too much pollution per person” is to have more people polluting"???
Are you serious?
I think you (and others) have misunderstood what I was saying — the metric can be gamed by having more people. Most of Canada’s pollution is industrial and won’t shift all that much by adding more people. The solution is to just call out all the polluting factors and reduce them, no matter which metric is being used to measure.
The problem isn’t the pollution to person ratio, it’s the pollution. The solution is for the entire country to pollute less.
No. Being a better measurement does not indicate to it being a perfect one.
Er, per capita means that increasing the population de facto decreases the ratio, unless the pollution increases as well. What are you saying “no” to and why are you introducing “being perfect?” That’s two moved goalposts in one statement.
The goal is to reduce environmental pollutants. The way to do this is to measure the delta in pollution. Population doesn’t matter any more than landmass (and potentially slightly less).
I’m not introducing any goal posts. These are things assumable with common sense. “If a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a metric” applies in such case. For progress, the only thing that matters is the total amount going down—neither per km area nor per capita have any value in measuring meaningful progress. But they could provide a good snapshot of present impact of each country.
Per capita is a better snapshot because it measures impact of a citizen in the country. Per landmass isn’t great because it ignores countries with outsized impacts.