Per capita CO₂ emissions Over Time

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

by elsewhen • 3 years ago

54 70 3 years ago

ourworldindata.org

pfdietz• 3 years ago

US per capita CO2 emissions are now down to World War 1 levels.

dd362• 3 years ago

And what’s population vs. then?

lucb1e3• 3 years ago

"per capita"

Being as good as WW1 is a positive because the USA's emission peak was quite a lot higher still in the 1970s (per capita), I don't think this was criticism necessarily.

What surprised me, what I didn't know, is that the USA has been one of the highest for so long actually, starting to be worse than what most of the EU is today (~10t CO2e/capita/year) already in ~1903 and remaining that way even during the great depression. Being back to 1915 levels is not that bad with that kind of history (of course, until the ~1990s at the earliest, nobody knew this was an issue so no blame/fault for that era).

lucb1e3• 3 years ago

Which, to put in perspective, is 25% higher than the UK (industrial revolution starter and all that) has ever been. The EU-27 average is lower still, but not every country had its peak at the same time so that makes sense.

Today's "leaders" are oil states like Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, followed on the heels by Australia, the USA, and... Mongolia? Because of the low population density, they got a lot of individual house's heating or why?

jcranmer2• 3 years ago

Mongolia is a very mining-centric economy (kind of like Australia), especially in coal. The vast majority of Mongolia's electricity comes from coal.

nonethewiser2• 3 years ago

Which, to put in perspective, is 25% higher than the UK (industrial revolution starter and all that)

What do you mean to suggest by "industrial revolution starter and all that"? I would not expect emissions at the very beginning of the industrial revolution to hold a candle to peak industrialization. Being the first to industrialize seems entirely irrelevant.

nancyhn• 3 years ago

That's remarkable considering there wasn't even air conditioning or washing machines or commercial airline travel back then.

76SlashDolphin• 3 years ago

Air conditioners are actually remarkably efficient at what they do, doubly so if used for heating as well. Washing machines are also a lot more efficient than the alternative, that being people manually washing clothes. And commercial airlines don't emit THAT much per capita since most people don't fly all that often.

What the US had during WWI was a lot of domestic manufacturing which is now outsourced and the replacement CO2 emitters are probably mostly cars and animal farming.

MattRix• 3 years ago

Ok but now take into account the CO2 emissions due to goods that are used/consumed by Americans, but produced and shipped from elsewhere (ex China).

mc322• 3 years ago

Do they want to eat their cake and have it too?

They could add an export tax or whatever (maybe pollution tax) and use that to offset emissions (diff sources of energy or scrubbers, etc)

sanxiyn9• 3 years ago

People did that too, and it is still decreasing after trade adjustment.

nonethewiser2• 3 years ago

Per capita is such a messy measurement. China manufactures goods for the entire world. The United States grows food for the entire world. The people in each country aren't simply driving the emissions and enjoying the fruits of it.

ghayes• 3 years ago

Per capita consumption would likely be a better measurement? Obviously much harder to measure.

quicklime• 3 years ago

It is harder, although people have tried to do it, e.g.: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289373031_Environme...

xnx• 3 years ago

It's got to be very close to per capita spending.

mikepurvis• 3 years ago

Definitely harder to measure, but I think this is the basic premise of John Michael Greer's Wealth of Nature [1]: that what we refer to as the "primary" economy—resource extraction industries like mining, farming, and so on—are in fact secondary to the true primary economy of purely natural systems upon which those industries rest, and if we can devise means of valuing and pricing the contribution of that true primary economy, then we'll be much better positioned not to treat those resources (including things like the ability of it to absorb pollution) as bottomless.

On the one hand, it's carbon pricing ++, but I think it's quite a holistic way of looking at the matter, since it's also trying to consider the multitude of other ways that poor stewardship of the natural world ultimately impacts the survivability of the planet, in terms of things like over-fishing, deforestation leading to soil erosion, irresponsible pesticide use leading to monocultures, etc etc.

[1] https://newsociety.ca/books/w/the-wealth-of-nature

MrBodangles• 3 years ago

It’s called “embodied energy” and is notoriously difficult to calculate due to globalisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy

Corporations promoted offshoring/outsourcing specifically to move their most pollutant/dangerous processes to the developing world — out of reach from the threat of western democracy and it’s environmental/labor regulations.

Using per capita production is a whataboutism psychological warfare tactic to derail climate/emissions discussions and point the finger at China etc, even though the developed world has always been responsible for the majority of the demand, and “embodied” energy/emissions.

throw0101c2• 3 years ago

Not really. The Global Carbon Project maintains a database of estimates of consumption-based emissions:

* https://www.icos-cp.eu/science-and-impact/global-carbon-budg...

peyton• 3 years ago

It’s pretty clear this is just a map of where the oil comes from and thus likely not very useful.

janalsncm• 3 years ago

It’s important to contextualize for sure. Perhaps the numbers could be fudged by including imports in per-capita calculations, but you run into cycles because ultimately the world is interconnected. CO2 is mostly fungible anyways, so we should clean up everywhere we can.

sanxiyn9• 3 years ago

That doesn't change much. Trade-adjusted data is similar. US per capita emissions, both unadjusted and trade-adjusted, started to fall since 2005.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

wslh• 3 years ago

Yes, I think we should analyze how carbon traverse the supply chain as a component.

sanxiyn9• 3 years ago

We already do. Both are useful.

wewxjfq• 3 years ago

Per capita the amount of US exports is nothing out of the ordinary.

throw0101c2• 3 years ago

China manufactures goods for the entire world.

See "No, the U.S. didn't outsource our carbon emissions to China":

* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-our-...

There is a database of estimates of consumption-based emissions referenced in the article.

evandale2• 3 years ago

Per-capita data for global problems are useless to look at because the planet doesn't care where the emissions come from.

p1necone• 3 years ago

Id argue that's exactly why we should look at per capita data, otherwise people and companies from smaller countries look at the data and throw their hands up in the air and do nothing because (some big country) dwarfs the numbers from where they are.

A factory pumping out N units of c02 should be trying/incentivised to cut c02 emissions regardless of whether they're in the United States or in Niue. Per capita emissions data gives us a much better idea of where those factories might be than data that doesn't take population into account.

YetAnotherNick• 3 years ago

Or.. country could just ignore the data. I think the only solution is for the rich country to pay the poor countries to decrease their usage proportional to the expected decrease. Not arguing if it is fair or not, but likely the only thing that could work.

evandale2• 3 years ago

I want to make this perfectly clear: The Canadian people are not responsible for the per-capita emissions of the country; we have no control over it and there's nothing citizens can do to reduce our footprint.

Canada's high emissions per-capita are a combination of its disproportionately large industry, 2nd largest landmass in the world, a large part of the country being a frozen wasteland, and its miniscule population.

Per-capita is useless in practice because a factory pumping out 1000000 units in Canada will look bad per-capita.

A factory pumping 1000000 units in China looks great per-capita.

It's not a fair comparison at all and if Canada was 0.0 emissions per-capita it would make 0 difference in the world because China outputs the equivalent to a Canada in a short time frame.

Canada's energy is the cleanest in the entire world by a massive margin. Ontario is 100% non-emitting energy. Canada never gets any credit for any of this, ever, while European countries still buying natural gas from Russia are lauded as trailblazers in clean energy.

Canada does far far more than its fair share for the rest of the world and it doesn't deserve to be singled out due to an idiotic statistic that is only useful for comparing local phenomenons.

jcranmer2• 3 years ago

Random interesting tidbit: Kuwait's emissions peaked in 1991... at 367.93t per person.

(There's a reason it got that high, and it actually isn't even Kuwait's fault: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires).

alfor• 3 years ago

It’s starting to decrease! The US, Europe and other places. Expect the poorer place to follow as they get to use the same technology.

Solar PV is going to be huge and will replace most other sources. Our biggest problem is population aging and decrease.

dirtyid2• 3 years ago

I'd expect developing countries to massive increase emissions first as they capitalize. Reason why PRC uses more concrete in 3 years than US uses in last 100 apart from PRC being massive is because US/west emissions from capital/construction (30% of total) is spread out over time. All the developing countries are going to be pouring tons of concrete as they grow. Some emissions can be mitigated from production end but a lot of the dirtier stuff is unavoidable.

NotYourLawyer• 3 years ago

We should all aspire to be more like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

mc322• 3 years ago

It seems like some of their data is dirty, how can Sint Maarten and Curacao have used so much in the past to go down relatively by a lot?

nocoiner3• 3 years ago

Probably used to have refineries that have since closed.

wittenbunk• 3 years ago

I'm having trouble squaring this data showing US emissions going down with the ever increasing consumption I see all around me in everyday life. I just don't buy it at face value.

vanillax• 3 years ago

Your opinion and observations are not facts. Either global warming is real because the data shows it or you are ignoring the data with your own bias. Pick one.

sanxiyn9• 3 years ago

Consumption is not emission. We are in fact making much more efficient use of energy.

gonzo41• 3 years ago

The only values you should track is co2 and ch4 ppm in the atmosphere. They are both steadily marching up.

Qwertious• 3 years ago

I'm having trouble squaring this data showing US emissions going down with the ever increasing consumption I see all around me in everyday life.

You're assuming that individual consumption is the primary source of emissions, instead of relatively invisible-to-the-consumer industrial processes. Which is understandable, because BP, Exxon etc have all poured billions of dollars into creating that misconception, into convincing everyone that to solve climate change, the average consumer must research how much coal was burned to produce that Twix before they buy it.

In practice, the carbon emissions of any particular good can vary wildly, and are quite opaque (by design, as no corporation wants to advertise their shortcomings in support of a "buy less stuff!" movement).

sanxiyn9• 3 years ago

Individual consumption is in fact one of primary sources of emissions. That's not BP or Exxon propaganda, see what EPA says about it:

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Transportation is 28%, and industry is 23%. US in fact drives larger cars like SUV and cars with worse fuel efficiency. This is directly reflected in higher per capita emission of US compared to Europe.

reducesuffering• 3 years ago

Most cars used to get 12 mpg

https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1237-may-...

koolba• 3 years ago

What an ofd way to present data. The colors are per capita, but the presentation is by country, i.e. area, so it looks like half the worlds emissions are produced by just Russia and Canada.

wmf4• 3 years ago

Yeah, try the chart tab not the map tab.

pluto_modadic• 3 years ago

I wonder how much of this data is skewed by billionaires...

wmf4• 3 years ago

Not much because there are so few of them. Industry OTOH...

megaman821• 3 years ago

There are about 1,000 billionaires in the US. If they emit a thousand times more CO2 than an average person they would equal a million people. There are about 334 million non-billionaires in the US. Not enough billionaires to realistically skew these numbers.

bhouston• 3 years ago

Why is Canada, US so much higher than UK, EU? I would have thought they would be much more similar, but instead Canada, US is about double UK, EU.

wmf4• 3 years ago

US/Canada has a higher standard of living and is also less energy-efficient. These factors are multiplicative so the resulting difference is large.

sanxiyn9• 3 years ago

US and Canada drive larger cars with worse fuel efficiency. This is one of primary causes.

timbit42• 3 years ago

One reason for Canada is the use of a lot of energy to heat buildings in the winter. Canada has a lot of hydro power in British Columbia and Quebec, but the prairie provinces don't and use natural gas instead.

rowls66• 3 years ago

Interesting how much earlier the UK industrialized compared to continental Europe. I would not have expected such a large gap.

dirtyid2• 3 years ago

Interesting how US emissions started falling around/post GFC when residential construction collapsed and have yet to recover. Us new house starts around ~60% of mid 2000s high, while piling on 40m to population. I wonder how much that contributed. I think 2/3 of US building stock is SFHs while construction accounts for than 1/3 of emissions and I think there's 6-7 million units of housing shortage from last decade of underbuilding.

ecommerceguy• 3 years ago

Why can't we count trees per capita? Are they not Co2 sinks? Not one of you care to answer.

Evidlo• 3 years ago

Also see the equivalent chart on GapMinder.

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$bubble$encod...

You can plot other types of charts like bar plots or bubble charts for lots of country statistics.

DropInIn• 3 years ago

Clearly not tracking respiratory CO2, let alone agricultural CO2, which effectively nullifies its value regarding _actual_ CO2 production.

This is a 'Feul Byproduct' data set, not a CO2 production dataset.

Per capita CO₂ emissions Over Time

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