This report will focus on exploring worldwide carbon dioxide emissions by using data from the United Nations.

Greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide (CO2) are at the forefront of international discussion as United States president Joe Biden held a virtual Earth Day Summit with world leaders on April 22, 2021. This summit had many countries agree to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These countries also included countries that had previously stayed away from climate talks, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. As these world talks were happening, I decided to analyze carbon dioxide emissions learn more about the topic.

Before I start my analysis, there are some important notes that I should mention. First, I found my data that I will be analyzing today from the United Nations at their website data.un.org. In the process, I also combined this dataset with a dataset from Kaggle that specifies the continents of the countries. Second, in the United Nations dataset, there are some gaps in data for countries that did not report the data. A noticeable example of this is the lack of data from Russia when they formed from the Soviet Union. Third, throughout this report, I plan on referring to carbon dioxide as “CO2” in both my analysis and in charts. Fourth, when referring to “Total CO2 Emissions” that measurement is in thousand metric tons of CO2 while when referring to “CO2 emissions per capita” the measurement is metric tons of CO2.


Worldwide Analysis of CO2 Emissions

Worldwide Total CO2 Emissions

This first map demonstrates each country’s overall CO2 emissions. From this map, it is easy to determine that countries such as China and the United States are two of the highest producers of CO2 emissions. These two countries are very noticeable in the discussion of greenhouse gas emissions, and there will be an individual case study later on in this report. Over time the leaders of total CO2 emissions change, but emissions for almost every country grow. While this map does not account for the population, it is necessary to explain why humans produce an increasing amount of CO2 each year.

Worldwide Emissions Per Capita

This second map takes a little different approach to analyze the world’s CO2 emissions as it is per capita. This measurement helps us understand which country’s citizens produce the most CO2 emissions individually. Surprisingly these numbers are very different from the last graph as China drops significantly while smaller middle eastern countries such as Qatar take the lead. Qatar’s per capita CO2 emissions is around 30.77 in 2017, which means that each Qatari citizen produces 30.77 metric tons of CO2 in a single year. While the population of Qatar is not that great, this statistic can occur for many reasons which include luxurious lifestyles and lots of fossil fuel combustion.


Above or Below Average

Countries below and above the worldwide total CO2 emissions

When thinking of the best way to show which countries produce the most CO2 emissions, I looked at comparing above and below average country’s total CO2 emissions. This revealed some interesting results including that many of the top producing countries stayed the same over time. It seems that a majority of countries in Asia and North American stayed above average while countries in Africa and South American tended to stay below average. Both Europe and Oceania seemed split and changed more as the years went by.

Countries below and above the worldwide average CO2 emissions per capita

This map is very similar to the previous map except that it is looking at the below and above average per capita. Many of the same countries are above and below, but one developing trend that I found was that more countries seemed to fall below the average, which means that the data was becoming more skewed as the top countries produced more over the years.


Projection of Worldwide Total CO2 Emissions

When looking deeper into total CO2 emissions, it was interesting to find facts about the future. While in recent months countries around the world have started to commit to reducing greenhouse gasses, there are many different projections on how much CO2 emissions will climb. In a 2019 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration they stated that “global energy-related CO2 emissions will grow 0.6% per year from 2018 to 2050.” This statistic is worrying but also very interesting to analyze. I took past data from the United Nations and projected how much the total amount of CO2 produced each year would grow. Though in the past, the amount has seemed to increase at a faster rate, there is still expected to increase to around 38 billion yearly metric tons of CO2 by 2050. This is almost an 8 billion yearly increase from 2018, where it was around 31.1 billion metric tons. This yearly number is concerning considering that in 1975 the number was around 12.3 billion metric tons.


Continent Comparison

A way to look at which regions of the world produce have the most CO2 emissions is by splitting it based on the continent. I started my analysis with per capita because I wanted to see which continent’s citizens produce the most CO2. Unfortunately for Oceania, because of their small amount of countries combined with above-average CO2 emissions, they produce the most emissions per capita. Outside of Oceania, the analysis begins as Europe holds the title until 2017 when Asia barely takes the lead. Europe is very diverse in many ways including with CO2 emissions. They have countries with high(Luxembourg) and low(Albania) per capita rates. While they have this diversity, Europe still has countries with high rates which gives them a high per capita average. Interestingly over time, the continents got closer together in their average. I could not find an explanation for this except for the possibility that greenhouse reducing measures in some countries combined with the increase in greenhouse gasses in others caused this.

When looking at the second chart, which is of the total CO2 emissions for each continent, the analysis changes. As seen before with the projection line chart, the overall yearly amount of CO2 produced increases for all the continents. Over time Asia dominates over the other continents because of the population boom, China’s massive increase in emissions, and the number of countries located in Asia. Before 1975 North America led the world in admissions because of the United States’ increase in CO2 emissions during that time.


Case Studies

North Korea vs South Korea

After World War II, Korea was split into two sides the communist North Korea and the American occupied South Korea. After tensions rose it led to the Korean war, which unofficially ended in 1953. After the war, both countries were left hurt by the harsh fighting. When our U.N. CO2 emissions data starts in 1975, both countries are similar in their total emissions numbers. This ended up changing very quickly as South Korea started to industrialize and North Korea fell behind. Surprisingly, North Korea started with higher per capita CO2 emissions numbers, but as the country started to fail financially and politically, the numbers dramatically dropped. Since 1985 the two countries have had polarly different reactions with CO2 emissions. As the South began to prosper and thrive with democracy, trade, and globalization, the North struggled with the fall of the Soviet Union, economic crisis, and becoming known as the “hermit kingdom.” In 2017 South Korea produced almost 30 times the amount of CO2, and the average citizen produced almost 15 times per capita CO2 emissions. While this might be a good thing that North Korea is not polluting the earth, it is not for good reasons that they are doing so. North and South Korea are great examples of how industrialization can have a major effect on a countries CO2 emissions.


China vs the United States of America

In recent years China has joined the United States as a world superpower and now has the biggest economy in the world. These two countries are very different in almost all senses. From their histories to political standing, the two countries were built to become rivals on the global stage. Both of these countries are pretty terrible when it comes to CO2 emissions. Both have held the title of “country with most total CO2 emissions” and were not even close to any other countries. Currently, China has the biggest economy in the world and also produces the most total CO2 emissions. In 2017, China produced over 9 billion metric tons of CO2 while the United States produced over 4.8 billion metric tons. To put this in perspective, the next closest country is India, with around 2 billion metric tons. While China has a population of over 1.4 million, this number is giant. This massive amount of CO2 is produced by a lack of regulations, widescale industries, and the constant burning of fossil fuels. While China takes the trophy for the most CO2 produced in 2017 before 2005, the United States produced more than China. In the past 40 years, due to relaxation on free-market reforms, involvement in globalization, and opening of foreign trade, China has had the fastest expansion of an economy in modern history. From poor country to world superpower in 40 years has its downsides, which include CO2 emissions. The United States surprisingly has stayed relatively stable when it comes to total CO2 emissions. The U.S. increased and then decreased CO2 emissions in 40 years due to regulation changes and a push for greener environmental changes. When comparing the two countries’ per capita numbers, the United States has a much higher rate due to heavy consumer culture, burning of fossil fuels, and much more. Since 2005 the number has decreased, but it is still one of the highest in the world. In recent news between the two countries, Mr.Kerry, a senior advisor to President Biden, met in China to address commitments to the climate crisis. The two parties talked about many things, including greenhouse gases. Some good news is that for the first time China is agreeing that climate change is a crisis and is committing itself to work with other countries in reaching a goal of reduced greenhouse gasses. This, in conjunction with President Xi attending the virtual climate summit, is good news for reducing CO2 emissions.


Chile vs Venezuela

These two South American countries are very different from each other in their culture, politics, and much more. While these two countries are both medium-sized, they have very different CO2 emissions. Venezuela was once a thriving country that prospered on oil and was one of the richest countries in the world. In recent years a drop in oil price combined with bad economic policies has plunged the country into crisis. With food shortages, extreme inflation, and authoritarianism the country is in no way thinking about CO2 emissions. In the past, the countries per capita emissions hovered around the world average. When the crisis hit in the mid-2010s, the emissions per capita crashed as well. Falling from almost 6 metric tons per capita of CO2 to 3.5 metric tons, this sharp drop was a result of lost industrialization. Chile, on the other hand, has been quiet when it comes to CO2 emissions until the past 10 years. Chile has slowly increased CO2 emissions both per capita and total since 1975. Whether due to industrialization and more recently conservative leadership focused on business and profit, the country is now the most CO2 emissions per capita in South America. This was quite surprising to me as Chile is not known as a country with high CO2 emissions. While the country still falls way below the total world average and per capita world average when comparing it to other South American countries it is an interesting find.


Conclusion

Overall in this report, I looked at carbon dioxide emissions from many different perspectives. While there are many different findings and conclusions, some of the common themes are, that countries with more industrialization produce more CO2, a few huge countries are producing most of the worlds CO2, and that without intervention CO2 emissions could climb 0.6% each year until 2050 which could have devastating effects on the planet. Carbon dioxide is just one of the many greenhouse gasses that attributes to global warming and climate change. While President Biden and other world leaders are working towards reducing gasses, it is up to us to work towards these goals before it is too late.