The global footprint measure expresses the impact individuals have on a global level. I don't know if we should instead move towards a measure of the impact nations or regions have on the global level. I rather think we should move towards a similar per capita footprint than to say that in a sparsely populated country or region, people can of course have a bigger footprint.
Generally I don't know if we should expand the politics of setting top-down reduction targets for countries or regions to this area. Setting deadlines causes people to shift their efforts towards the future (due to the 'discount rate' or 'rate of time preference'). There is evidence that this also goes for politicians. Like Schellenberger & Nordhaus I would prefer to see a 'breakthrough', though my conception is different from theirs.
A question is whether the "fair" way to allocate resource utilization is on a per capita basis. For example, someone living in a warm, mild climate might not have to heat or cool their house in any season, while someone in a Northern European climate might have to heat their house in winter simply to survive.
In that case, the European is going to be a significantly larger user of resources. Does this mean that Sweden, for example, should be depopulated in favor of India?
More importantly, homes should be warmed with green energy. Sweden gets its energy largely from hydro and nuclear and is moving towards expanding wind. Biomass should be an easy option for Sweden to add on. I'd guess that transportation uses more resources in Sweden than energy does.
The transport issue isn't going away. I think with current and near-current technology many countries could change their electricity supply to be more efficient and mostly renewables. When you start talking about the car, however, there's very little you can do to keep it the same level it is today. You can make electricity sustainable, with some work. Making personal (rather than public) transport sustainable is going to prove impossible, I fear. They should instead be thinking of ways to localise jobs, have more telecommuting and more public transportation in anticipation of the problems this will cause.
