I’m really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I’ll coast right through it. I’ll also accept “I don’t” and “very poorly” as answers
A little context on point one: annual CO2 emissions have more or less flattened out, but that means that the growth has stopped. We’re still emitting more CO2 per year than ever in history. (And it’s hard to say how durable that trend is, since it occurred over the years during which the pandemic drastically curtailed some of the top-emitting activities.) That’s a long, long, long way from net-zero.
The decrease in per-capita emissions from rich nations is consistent with the pattern observed for many pollutants. As economies gain wealth through polluting activities, the rising standard of living causes people to demand less pollution, and improving technology can meet the demand. The trick that we need to pull off here is for the wealthy nations to spread that technology as rapidly as possible to developing nations, so that they can increase their own standard of living without going through the polluting phase.
