Energy access and consumption is one of our top challenges today and the team at Our World In Data have done a great job of visualizing global energy consumption here.
I found two of the graphs they’ve put together particularly interesting:
What this graph shows is essentially two things:
- Poor countries with low GDP per Capita have low CO2 emissions (this is due to lack of access to sources of energy).
- Wealthier countries produce a lot of CO2 emissions.
Overall, United States has done a relatively better job in terms of cutting its emissions over time (emission per capita has actually declined over time in the last 3 decades). Of course, there is always room for more but United States and Western European countries won’t be able to bring the world into net-zero emissions alone.
The chart above makes it clear what needs to happen: China and India, among others, need to play ball.
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For analytical pieces similar to this one, please see here.
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Our World in Data (OWID) is a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality. It’s a project of the Global Change Data Lab, a registered charity in England and Wales, and founded by Max Roser, a social historian and development economist. The research team is based at the University of Oxford.
