2.3.3 Differences between people and places
Mean individual and household carbon footprints for a country conceal the differences within that country. As you saw for the UK, these differences in carbon footprints are strongly related to income and can be very great.
For example, the values given in Table 1 for 2022 hide:
- in India, the 2015 mean carbon footprint of 1.7 tonnes CO2 per person per year hides the differences between middle-class Indian households living in air-conditioned apartments and owning a television, refrigerator and motor scooter, or perhaps a car (Figure 10(a)), and the household of a subsistence farmer, whose only fuel is dried cow dung for cooking, and perhaps kerosene for a lamp (Figure 10(b))
- in Africa, the contrast between the elite, who may have a private swimming pool, and villagers who have to collect water for cooking and washing (Figures 10(c) and (d)) is not shown
- in China, where the lifestyles of the wealthier members of the very rapidly growing urban population still contrast with those of people living in China’s villages and rural areas (Figures 10(e) and (f)).
Figure 13 (a) Apartments, New Town, Kolkata, India, built for India’s fast-growing middle class; (b) Indian cattle farmer living on less than £1 per day; (c) government official’s house, Libreville, Gabon; (d) villager’s house, Jinja, Uganda; (e) typical apartment block, China; (f) village alley, near Yangshuo, China
Now watch the following videos. The first video by the late statistician Professor Hans Rosling graphically demonstrates that the richest billion people in the world emit most of its total carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest only emit a small proportion. Although this video was made in 2013 and the data have evolved, the basic message still holds. The second video expands on why it is important to compare carbon dioxide emissions per person for different countries (as in Table 1 and Figure 8), rather than just total emissions, in order to develop policies for tackling climate change on a fair basis.
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1
Transcript: Video 1 Who is responsible for carbon emissions and climate change?
HANS ROSLING:
I’m not the best person to tell you how bad climate change will be. Nor am I a specialist on how to prevent it. What I can do is to show you data to make you understand who is the one that emits the carbon dioxide. I will show this. You remember the yardstick from the poorest billion to the richest billion, from the one who hardly can afford shoes to the one who fly with airplanes?
Now, this shows the total amount of fossil fuel used in the world during one year – coal, oil and natural gas. And it represents more or less the total emission of carbon dioxide. Now, how much of that is used by the richest billion? Half of it. Now, the second richest billion? Half of what’s left. Then you understand what the third use, half of what’s left. And the others use hardly anything.
This is rounded numbers, but it clearly shows that almost all the fossil fuel is used here by the one, two, three richest billions. More than 85% they use. Now, the richest billion here at least have stopped increasing. But we are yet to see whether they will decrease. And in the coming decades, it’s the economic growth of these two that will increase the fossil fuel use and the carbon dioxide emission.
Even if these ones over here come out of extreme poverty and get richer all the way to the motorbike, that doesn’t contribute much to the emission of carbon dioxide. And regarding population growth, most of the additional billions in the next 40 years will be in this group here.
But still, if you ask people in the richest end, they seem to get everything wrong. They look down on the world from their very high emission and then they say, oh, those over there, you cannot live like us. You will destroy the planet. You see, I find the argument from the people here catching up to be much more correct and logic. They say, who are you to tell us that we can’t live like you? You better change first if you want us to do it differently.
Video 1 Who is responsible for carbon emissions and climate change?
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Download this video clip.Video player: Video 2
Transcript: Video 2 Carbon emissions per country and per capita
PROFESSOR:
How much energy do humans use? How much fossil fuel do we burn every year in the world? Which countries are most responsible for climate change? When comparing international emissions of carbon dioxide – not the only, but the most important greenhouse gas – it’s important to make the distinction between emissions per country and emissions per person, in other words, the total amount from a country and the average emissions per person in that country.
Both of these indicators are useful, but it’s very important not to confuse them when discussing climate change and who is responsible. This is a very helpful graph that shows the relationship between income and carbon dioxide emissions, both by country and per person. The data displayed in the graph are from the latest year they were available for all countries, which is 2018. More recent data for selected countries are shown later in this animation.
The horizontal x-axis shows income as GDP per capita per year in US dollars, from $0 to $128,000, and the vertical y-axis shows carbon dioxide emissions per country from almost 0 to over 20 tonnes. Each of these axes has a logarithmic scale, which is a nonlinear scale used when there is a large range of quantities. Each bubble represents a country, and all the major countries of the world have a bubble on this graph.
The colour of the bubble shows which world region a country is in. Red is Asia and Australasia. Green is the Americas. Blue is Africa and yellow is Europe. The size of the bubble – that is, the total area of the bubble – represents the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted from that country.
The graph shows that in general, as income per person in a country increases, carbon dioxide emissions per person also increase. In other words, people in rich countries, those towards the top right-hand side of the graph, generally emit more carbon dioxide per person than people in poorer countries, those towards the bottom left-hand side.
This graph also shows that emissions per person ranged from a fraction of a tonne per year in the poorest countries – these are mainly in Africa – to nearly 10 tonnes per year in the middle-income countries like China, and almost 20 tonnes per person in the richest countries, such as the USA.
This graph shows the most up-to-date data from 2022. The general trends and positions of the bubbles have not changed significantly between 2018 and 2022, but some of the more noticeable changes include some countries, like the UK, Sweden and Israel, having slightly higher income per capita and lower carbon dioxide emissions per person. The income per person in countries like Brazil, Romania and Ireland has risen, but the carbon dioxide emissions per capita have remained similar.
In 2022, China had slightly higher carbon dioxide emissions and income per capita. The bubble for China has the biggest area. China produces the highest total emissions of carbon dioxide per country, at roughly 11 gigatonnes, 11 billion tonnes per year. The USA produces the second highest emissions per country in the world, at roughly 5 gigatonnes per year. And India has the third highest, with just under 3 gigatonnes per year.
However, most importantly, these countries have very different emissions per person. So although India emits a large amount of carbon dioxide in total because it has a very large population, it has relatively low carbon dioxide emissions per person, at around 2 tonnes per year.
The USA has very high carbon dioxide emissions per person per year at around 15 tonnes, which is one of the highest in the world, only exceeded by some oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia.
China is in the middle with emissions per person at around 8 tonnes. This means that on average, individuals in China emit just over half that of individuals in the USA. So although China has the biggest bubble because of its very large population, its emissions per person are relatively moderate.
What countries with high overall emissions do to reduce them is obviously important, but the discussion around carbon dioxide emissions and climate can get confusing when it focuses only on total country emissions without considering emissions per person. By focusing on the total emissions reduction from a country, the disparity between countries’ per capita emissions, and therefore the inequalities within and between countries, can be overlooked.
It is important that when governments take action to reduce their country’s carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, they not only concentrate on the total emissions, but also consider the emissions per person.
This graph is also interesting when it comes to income, and shows that as countries get richer, they tend to have higher carbon dioxide emissions. Consider how the graph has changed over time from the 1800s to 2018. The bubbles are moving toward the top right-hand side of the graph, which shows that as income increases, the carbon dioxide emissions per person also increase.
However, being a high-income country doesn’t mean you have to have very high emissions per person. For example, the UK, France and Sweden all have relatively high incomes, but their carbon dioxide emissions per person are around a third or less than that of the USA. It will be interesting to follow these data over the years to follow the changes over time. Will countries keep moving to the top right-hand side of the graph or will they follow countries that have found ways to live well at lower emission levels?
Historically, greenhouse gas emissions have increased with higher incomes, so the richer countries became, the more they emitted. However, this relationship is no longer the case for some higher-income countries. Some countries, like the UK, France, Germany and Sweden, have managed to find ways to achieve economic growth and higher income while also reducing emissions per person.
This is crucial if the effects of the climate emergency we are already experiencing are to have any chance of being avoided in the future. You can go and find this graph yourself to find out where your country is, how it compares to other countries, and explore the data.
Video 2 Carbon emissions per country and per capita
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Activity 4 Income and carbon emissions across the world
Timing: Allow about 10 minutes
- a.Why is it important for international agreements on reducing carbon dioxide (and other GHG) emissions to compare countries on their emissions per person as well as on their total emissions?
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Answer
When attempting to negotiate international emissions reduction agreements, comparing mean emissions per person of different countries is fairer and so is more likely to be acceptable to Global South countries wishing to industrialise.
- b.Which groups of countries are historically responsible for the main growth in carbon dioxide emissions, and from which groups will the main growth come in the future?
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Answer
The historical growth in emissions has been from the developed countries during their industrialisation since 1800; some are now stabilising or reducing (though not fast enough). The future growth in emissions is likely to be from newly industrialising countries (e.g. India) and developing countries (e.g. Thailand) whose residents earn between $10 and $100 per day on average.
- c.What do the videos suggest that different countries should aim for to reduce their emissions?
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Answer
Developed countries with very high carbon emissions per person, like the USA, should reduce their emissions to the lower level of other developed countries like France and Sweden. Rapidly developing Global South countries like India and Thailand should try to avoid the path of the Global North by preventing their emissions per person from growing as much.
- d.What do the videos leave out of his analysis?
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Answer
The analysis in the two videos does not include non-CO2 GHG emissions or the emissions associated with imports and exports, but the basic lessons still apply.