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Environment: treading lightly on the Earth

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Figure 9 is a world map with the continents and countries within them shown in outline. There are solid black circles superimposed over each country. The area of each circle represents the relative size of the estimated carbon footprint per person in 2015 from the use of fossil fuels within that country in tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. The map shows for example that by far the largest carbon footprints per person in the world occur in oil producing Arab counties like Qatar and Saudi Arabia and in some Caribbean islands. It shows that the carbon footprints per person of the United States, Canada and Australia are next in size and similar. Smaller in size and similar are the carbon footprints per person of Russia, Japan and South Africa. The carbon footprints per person of Ireland and China are smaller still and also similar, but slightly larger than that of the UK. The carbon footprint per person of developing countries like India and most African countries are very much smaller. The actual size of the carbon footprints per person can be found by hovering a cursor over online version of the map.

 2.3.1 Carbon footprints per person