Oregon Senator Tries Blaming the World's Poor

Naturally one of Oregon's state senators presented this argument:

After numerous unsuccessful attempts to kill the bill on Monday, House Republican leader Carl Wilson (R-Grants Pass) said in a statement, "Climate change is a global problem, not an Oregon problem. Oregon's workers should not be punished for the reckless environmental policies of China and India."

This is a desperate argument, and I think somewhat cowardly, because it seeks to put the blame on the poor of the world, and it arrogantly assumes that Americans have an inherent right to emit more carbon pollution than citizens of another country.

I've probably written about this before, but here are the numbers:

These numbers come from the World Resource Institute's CAIT database, which goes to 2014, and the BP annual reports for 2015-2017. And the data are for energy use only, no changes in land use or other greenhouse gases like methane.)

How can anyone look at those numbers and claim the problem is really China and India??

Of course climate change is a global problem. And the solution is for everyone to solve their share of the problem. Some here in Oregon have expressed concern this will drive industries outside the state to where there are no cap-and-trade limits. (Idaho seems to be the preferred choice.) Has that happened elsewhere? Oregon already has one of the lowest state corporate tax rates of any state (7th lowest). They're going to give that up, just because of CnT? 

Maybe we should divide the troposphere up into N blocks, where N is the world population, and let every person on Earth sell credits to allow CO2 pollution in their block. People could sell their credits to brokers who then trade a large number of blocks. It's reduce emissions and be a poverty relief program as well.