alt Hacker NewsThere is literally no charitable interpretation of this point.
How much of a problem any individuals CO2 emissions are is completely decoupled from what nation they live in, or how many people live in that nation specifically.
If you hypothetically split up Asia or the US into 100 smaller countries then local emissions are not suddenly more (or less) of a problem than the are now (duh).
And of course more people have more of an influence on global outcomes.
This whole argument makes about as much sense as demanding that black people in Europe should not pay any income tax, because the total tax income from black people in Europe is very low, and "national budget does not care about per capita".
This is so disingenuous. Individuals do not build coal power plants, utilities (and therefore, governments) do. India and China are continuing to build fossil fuel power generation. Global warming does not care about 'fairness', global warming cares about co2 PPM in the atmosphere. When we address climate change, we have to do so at the government level, or we mine as well not bother.
The whole idea that we should look at 'emissions per capita' or 'historical emissions' in the interest of fairness is simply giving a license to governments to kill genuinely poor people in the third world.