From Climate Scepticism

By Jit

An Unalloyed Record of Success

Mark has written about the latest EDGAR release here. As last year, I also wanted to show some figures illustrating the global picture in 2024 and the changes since 2023.

Global Emissions of CO₂

Why CO₂, and not GHG (including CH₄, etc.)? Well, CO₂ comes from burning fossil fuels, and the others come from a variety of processes. I think CO₂, as the main greenhouse gas, is the one to focus on. I doubt this analysis changes fundamentally if we replace CO₂ with total GHG.

The world’s total emissions went up from 39.1 Gt CO₂ in 2023 to 39.6 Gt CO₂ in 2024. The net rise was about 520 Mt CO₂ year-on-year, a quantity somewhere between Brazil and Canada’s annual total last year.

The top ten emitters are tabulated below:

And here are the top ten growers and shrinkers, with “Internation Aviation” and “International Shipping” included:

Per-Capita emissions

The highest per-capita emissions come from Palau, at 63.7 t CO₂/person/yr, and the lowest from the Faroes, at 42 kg CO₂/person/yr. Warm jumpers? These figures compare to the global average of 4.888 t CO₂/person/yr, and the UK’s of 4.254 t CO₂/person/yr.

ASTERISK: averages conceal a lot of detail. The median value is a lot lower than the average, thanks to the relatively few individuals with large carbon dioxide emissions to their name. This applies globally and within each country; the distributions are heavily right-skewed. Humans on the planet in the most frequent emission bin are personally responsible for 2-3 t CO₂ per year – that is a SWAG, because the data does not allow the number to be computed.

Interestingly, the per-capita emissions of the average world human have not changed much over the years – see the grey line in the figure below. Some countries have grown their per-capita emissions, and others have reduced theirs. I know you can think of examples: I show a tale of two such countries below.

There are various ways of determining when the UK peaked as a country. They generally, to my mind, point in the same general temporal vicinity:

Maximum energy use: 2000

Last year with a budget surplus: 2001

Last year as a net exporter of energy: 2003

Peak productivity of employment in energy: 2005

See here for more on the energy part of these.

Meanwhile, the other featured country joined the WTO in 2001 and has not looked back. Rather spookily, China’s rise is almost a mirror of the UK’s decline.

GDP vs CO₂ emissions

At first they said we could cut our emissions and still have more. Then they said we had to stop growing altogether, or shrink. The people saying this are among those who have so far been largely unaffected by the UK’s, and the West’s, attack of climate angst and piety.

The next figure shows just how decoupled wealth was from carbon dioxide emissions in 2024. A few countries are labelled. [Note the log-log scale.]

ASTERISK: the GDP data is back-calculated from within the EDGAR spreadsheet. Ultimately, it seems to come from the World Bank (PPP). It is at least plausible that both GDP and CO₂ are estimates with common supporting variables – that the relationship is so clear because of this connection.

When it comes to your country’s GDP, there are two ways to grow it on this figure. One is to increase your energy use, and your fossil fuel energy use. [Moving right and up in the cloud.] The other is to allow technology to enable a more efficient use of energy. [Moving vertically in the cloud.] The plan of reducing emissions and growing GDP is not one that looks viable on the evidence of this figure.

It has been done, as the final figure shows. Here, 2001 and 2024 numbers are plotted on the same axes.  Several countries are labelled. All the labelled countries have grown. Some have grown while increasing their emissions – others while decreasing them. The distributions have shifted up and right.

ASTERISK: Developing countries naturally grow both emissions and GDP as they industrialise. But it is worth noting that the emission cuts made by for example the UK in this period were some of the easier to do: swapping coal for gas as electricity generators for example.

Editorial

Cutting CO₂ – we all love it, like paying taxes or obeying rules. We just like it when some other mug is doing it. Even criminals prefer to operate in places where everyone else is doing what they are supposed to.

Of the 208 countries in the EDGAR database, 47 made emissions cuts last year. On the other hand, 161 countries increased their emissions.

The majority of countries just do not care about CO₂ emissions. They will enjoy watching the countries of the decadent West cutting theirs.

Data

EDGAR here. The good folk at EDGAR tend to revise previous years’ data, so do not carve the presented numbers into an Edstone. [2023 numbers have changed this year, for instance.]

Bonus video

In case we’re all feeling very depressed about all this, let’s semi-ironically cheer ourselves up with four minutes of Randy Newman.