Map Detailing World Carbon Emissions - 2019

With the COP27 Climate Summit approaching, it is important to note that despite initiatives to take on climate change, countries and their lawmakers have been hesitant in creating and sticking to legislation that will keep the global temperature at and below its current threshold. Additionally, the threat of climate change will predominately and inversely affect poorer demographics and countries despite the inordinate amount of carbon emissions being produced elsewhere. As a species, humans have been the primary driver of climate change, and without change, the Earth that future generations will inhibit will be rife with an increased rate of natural disasters, the complete erasure of vitals species of plant and animals, along with the erosion of certain locations, especially those along the coasts.

Global superpowers hold the largest share of carbon emission in the world. The United States, Canada, Australia, and parts of Asia create some of the largest shares of carbon emissions as a result of heavy industrial trading and oil reserves. The highest per capita emissions on this map is Qatar, largely due to their relatively low, yet dense population and being the world leader in deposits of natural gas and oil. This, in turn, creates a boom within the country, amplifying their carbon usage as their city modernizes to meet the needs of the growing wealth.

In a consistent trend of avariciousness dating back to the 1930’s with the eruption of oil and gold reserves, billion and trillion dollar companies and their owners are persistent on the continued growth of wealth at the expense of the other 99% of the population. Despite the Paris Agreement, an internationally binding treaty signed in 2016, new oil leases continued to be signed to increase the production of oil. This data set, circa 2019, shows that the superpowers are still most responsible for climate change and its consequences. It will be interesting to see updates to this data set in the next 5-10 years to see if net carbon emissions goes down in the halfway point to 2050.