Everybody it’s talking about pollution, climate change, the Paris agreement and how countries can reduce their carbon footprint. Let’s see what data on this topic really looks like. I’ve picked 36 countries, relevant by their population, GDP and carbon emissions and compared the data between 2005 and 2017.

Here is how the carbon dioxide emissions changed:

CO 2 emissions, mil tons

2005 – 2017 comparison

There is a link between carbon emissions and GDP. More often than not, a country with higher GDP will produce more CO 2 than a country with lower GDP. One can notice that in general, the more developed countries reduced or maintained their emissions, but the increase for China and India really pops up. In the same situation are most of the Asian and African countries in this study. Most of them had experienced an economic boom, and that may explain the increase of emissions.

Lets see the difference more clearly in percents and absolute value:

CO 2 emissions, mil tons

Difference between 2005 and 2007 (%)

CO 2 emissions, mil tons

Difference between 2005 and 2007

This may look bad for developing countries, but lets take a look over how many kg of CO 2 are emitted per capita in each of these countries.

CO 2 emissions, kg / capita

2005 – 2017 comparison

Here you can see exactly the opposite. The countries with higher GDP per capita produce more CO 2 for every citizen than developing countries. However, if comparing the data between years, the same pattern described above emerges, countries that have increased their economy more also emit more CO 2 .

It is interesting to see how many CO 2 is released into the atmosphere in a year for every dollar own by a country.

CO 2 emissions, g / $

2005 – 2017 comparison

The European Union proves that they really take climate change seriously, by having the lowest emission per dollar from the developed countries. Other developed countries don’t look that good, the US numbers are more than double than France’s, and even they are overtaken by Australia, South Korea and Canada

Nations that are not so developed like Bangladesh, Ethiopia and R.D. Congo don’t produce too much CO 2 . On the other hand countries that are in the middle – economically speaking – tend to emit more CO 2 per dollar. It is encouraging the trend though, China halved the emissions per dollar and probably the most important conclusion seen here is that (with the exception of Saudi Arabia), every country produces “cleaner” money in 2017.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_projected_GDP_(PPP)

https://www.populationpyramid.net/population-size-per-country/