excuse me squarepants, sweden get actually more to eat than americans, and yet they pollute way less on that list
LOOOOOOOOOOO
Since there is such a
strong relationship between income and per capita CO2 emissions, we’d expect this to be the case: that countries with high standards of living would have a high carbon footprint. But what becomes clear is that there can be large differences in per capita emissions, even between countries with similar standards of living. Many countries across Europe, for example, have much lower emissions than the US, Canada or Australia.
In fact, some European countries have emissions not far from the global average: In 2017 emissions in Portugal are 5.3 tonnes; 5.5t in France; and 5.8t per person in the UK. This is also much lower than some of their neighbours with similar standards of living, such as Germany, the Netherlands, or Belgium. The choice of energy sources plays a key role here: in the UK, Portugal and France, a much higher share of electricity is produced from nuclear and renewable sources – you can explore this electricity mix by country
here. This means a much lower share of electricity is produced from fossil fuels: in 2015,
only 6% of France’s electricity came from fossil fuels, compared to
55% in Germany.
Prosperity is a primary driver of CO2 emissions, but clearly policy and technological choices make a difference.
There are large inequalities in the carbon footprint of people across the world. How do countries across the world compare? Where in the world do people emit the most CO2?
ourworldindata.org