Ranking of nations according to their carbon emissions depends on what is being measured.
A nation might emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide due to its population size and economic size. In another case, a nation might have low emissions overall, but still high emissions on a per capita basis.
These discrepancies become important for understanding issues like climate responsibility and inequality.
In this report, there is an analysis of seven nations – the United States, Canada, China, South Africa, the United Kingdom, India and Kenya.
Through visualization techniques, it tries to find relationships between carbon emissions, per capita carbon emissions, population, changes historically, and economic activity.
How to explore: Hover over chart elements to inspect values. Use legends to isolate countries where available. Drag to zoom into selected areas and double-click to reset supported charts.
Using only the national emissions of each country may be misleading when looking at individual footprints.
Per capita emissions refer to the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per person in that country.
This is one way of viewing the situation which is different from national emissions; however, it does not cover every person’s footprint.
Reading the chart
Horizontal bars show the average per capita carbon dioxide emissions each year. The longer the bar, the higher the average emissions.
While this comparison is valuable for comparing national footprints, it does not give information on any inequalities within individual countries.
One year does not suffice to capture the picture. Historical emissions figures provide insight into whether emission trends by nations are persistent, rising or falling.
The following graph plots the per-capita emissions annually from 1990 to 2024.
Reading the chart
These graphs make it possible to compare both the level of emissions and their trend over time.
A downward sloping graph implies reducing annual per capita emissions. But it does not mean that total national emissions were reduced by the same percentage.
Emissions per person and national emissions as a whole pertain to two different aspects of the climate issue.
The visualization incorporates three factors as follows:
The graph shows that nations with varying populations and differing per capita footprints will have vastly differing national footprints.
Reading the chart
States located in the upper portion have a greater amount of total emissions of their country, whereas countries located to the right have a greater per capita amount of emissions.
The bubbles indicate population as an additional factor, thus demonstrating the reasons for different perspectives on the same data.
Since total emissions, population, and per capita emissions are mathematically connected factors, the graph demonstrates the matter of scale, not causality.
Each nation came into the 1990s with varying levels of emissions.
Using only absolute figures will not allow for easy comparison between nations since the level of changes will vary.
However, an index will make it easy to measure proportional changes, where 1990 emission level is taken as 100.
Examples are:
Reading the chart
This relative comparison relies on percentages rather than the actual amounts of emissions.
In other words, a state can experience a big percentage decrease without having a low amount of per capita emissions.
The same is true of a big percentage increase based on a low starting point.
However, economic development and carbon dioxide emission have been linked together at different times in history. The last visualization shows GDP per capita compared to CO₂ emissions per capita.
Each dot is an individual country for an individual year, with the x-axis being a logarithmic scale due to variations in GDP per capita.
Reading the chart
The following graph enables us to understand the relationship between economic production and emissions per capita. But a correlation does not imply causality. Various other factors such as changes in energy sources, industrial structures, efficiency levels, foreign trade and policies could influence emissions in a country. Units and coverage of the GDP variable must be verified from the data documentation before arriving at any economic conclusions.
The five visualizations show why carbon emissions cannot be measured by a simple national ranking.
Emissions per capita show variations in average footprints. National emissions show the magnitude of the emissions. Emission trend lines show which way the trend line is moving.
Population shows the significance of the link between national emissions and average emissions. The GDP shows an alternative way of measuring economic activity and carbon intensity.
All of these together help provide a better interpretation of climate inequalities and progress.
One nation may have low emissions per capita, but may still contribute significantly to the global emissions because of its large population. Another nation may have low national emissions, but may have high average footprints.
Both are inadequate in their own right.
The central message is that how we measure emissions changes the story we tell about them.
The report employs the publicly available CO₂ and greenhouse gases emissions data set provided by Our World in Data.
The study analyzes seven countries from 1990 to 2024.
The data set includes various historical measures such as:
All data were extracted from the publicly available CSV file and imported into R.
Data Preparation entailed selection of the countries, limitation of the time frame, checking for missing data and generation of new variables.
GDP per capita was determined by dividing GDP by population size.
The Index of Emissions was calculated by dividing per capita emissions in each year by the respective country’s 1990 figure and multiplying by 100.
The Charts Based on the Last Observation are based on the most recent observation of the relevant variables.
There are many limitations to this study.
Firstly, average emissions per country hide inequality among individuals and families.
Secondly, CO₂ emissions from the territory do not include all emissions related to consumption of imported products.
Thirdly, land-use change is not included in the emissions indicator.
Fourthly, missing data on GDP may influence the coverage of the economic comparison.
Lastly, correlation does not prove causation.
Climate change is a global issue, but all nations do not have the same emissions profile.
This exercise of comparing seven countries proves the need to look at emissions intensity, size, and historical change as a whole.
Different indicators can tell us different things.
Therefore, an intelligent debate about climate responsibility involves more than simply determining which nation is the biggest emitter.
The carbon gap is not one number. It is a collection of different perspectives on emissions, population and development.
OpenAI ChatGPT was utilized to aid in the creation of this report with regards to coding in R Markdown, designing visualizations, and other technical advice.
Responsibility for reviewing and approving the code and data lies with the author of this report.
Our World in Data. (n.d.). CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions [Data set]. GitHub. https://github.com/owid/co2-data
Our World in Data. (n.d.). CO2 data: Data sources. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-dataset-sources
The dataset was accessed using the following public URL: