SusFin Week8 Exploratory Analysis

Introduction

In this exercise, I downloaded, cleaned, and combined 4 data sets from Climate Watch and World Bank, including countries’ GHG emission, population, GDP, and PPP from 2010 to 2019.

The combined long-format data has 4 variables: “Country Name” , “Year” , “Value” , “Indicator” and “Country Code”. And under the “Indicator” variable, there are 4 different labels: “GHG_emission(MtCO2e)” , “GDP(US$)” , “PPP(international$)” and”Population”

# A tibble: 9,910 × 5
    Year Value Indicator            `Country Code` `Country Name`
   <dbl> <dbl> <chr>                <chr>          <chr>         
 1  2010  27.2 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
 2  2011  29.2 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
 3  2012  28.6 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
 4  2013  26.8 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
 5  2014  26.5 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
 6  2015  26.8 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
 7  2016  27.0 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
 8  2017  26.7 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
 9  2018  27.8 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
10  2019  28.8 GHG_emission(MtCO2e) AFG            Afghanistan   
# … with 9,900 more rows

Finding 1: The country’s GHG emissions increase and then decrease as its GDP grows, consistent with the environmental Kuznets curve.

The Kuznets curve is a hypothesis that suggests that as an economy develops and becomes more prosperous, its income inequality first increases and then decreases. This relationship is often illustrated as an inverted U-shaped curve.

In the context of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the Kuznets curve suggests that as a country develops, its GHG emissions first increase and then decrease. The theory is based on the idea that during the early stages of development, countries tend to rely heavily on industrial production and use of fossil fuels, which leads to an increase in emissions. However, as countries become more affluent, they are better able to invest in cleaner and more efficient technologies, which can lead to a decrease in emissions.

Finding 2: The total carbon emissions of emerging markets such as China and India have surpassed those of developed countries such as the United States and Canada

GHG emissions in the United States and Canada have peaked and are slowly declining. In contrast, China and India’s GHG emissions are on the rise. Currently, the four countries in descending order of total GHG emissions are China, the United States, India, and Canada.

Finding 3: In terms of GHG emissions per capita, developed countries such as the United States and Canada are still far ahead of emerging markets such as China and India

Dividing the GHG emission by population , the four countries in descending order of GHG emissions per capita are Canada, the United States, China, and India.