I mention per capita because pollution per person that is living because of that system is just a more fair metric to me. It also mean that on a responsibility level people with a higher amount of pollution contribution have a higher responsibility to do something about per person.

Now the question we were trying to answer: “is the US being left behind?”

Still hasn’t been answered, which sure linkages, but what is the delta between the US trend and the EU, China, India, North and Southern Africa, Central and South America, and Canada?

If the rest of the world is seemingly blazing ahead on renewables, public transport, and EVs and their trends of per capita pollution generation is on a down word trend at a statistically significant rate then the US then the hypothesis would seem supported. If, however, it’s not or the inverse is even true then the hypothesis would seem to be untrue in this regard. A fuzzier metric to compare in this would be standard of living as well, since how well people are living based on their per capita pollution generation to me also shows a maturity of the model (and in this context would be if the US was sliding backing into preindustrial society the previous metric (pollution per pop) would show that as a huge success but few would call it that).

Also India has a heavy textile industry, so water usage and pollution is a big unfortunate part of that, but it’s one reason why we in the western world went from spinning and sowing taking up a significant part of people’s daily lives to clothes being so cheap they are disposed of by the tonnage based on fashion trends.