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Over at Retrospectacle, there was some discussion about whether the richest countries were the most polluting countries. This little tool from Google has an answer, and so much more.
The US is represented by the large yellow circle in the (predictably) upper-right corner. Most European countries are in the upper right corner, too, although the logarithmic scale is a little misleading: for the most part, European countries emit about half as much CO2 per capita as the US.
In fact, the Middle Eastern oil trifecta--Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates--is the only region that outpollutes the U.S. on a per capita basis. One exception: Trinidad and Tobago. Does anybody know why?
You can also make graphs of fertility, women as percent of workforce, even phone and Internet usage. And the coolest feature by far? The graphs are parametric, so you can watch the relationships change over time.
Hat-tip, Jacob Klein.
Comments
According the World Factbook, Trinidad and Tobago are the 13th largest exporter of natural gas.
Posted by: Babbler | January 25, 2007 3:06 PM
Well, look at that...
Thanks!
Posted by: Sarah Dasher | January 25, 2007 3:28 PM
To add to Babbler, a country (or local area) which contains certain
(mainly for export) industries will show up as a large spike. The most important of these are oil extraction and/or petrochemical processing.
Whether to attribute the emmisions to the producer, -or the consumer of said products is an interesting question.
Posted by: bigTom | January 25, 2007 11:18 PM
It is an interesting question. Knowing almost nothing about lifestyle in any of the abovementioned countries, however, it would surprise me to find that the citizens of those places--especially Trinidad and Tobago--live particularly carbon-emitting lives with respect to the rest of the world. To me, in other words, it seems much more plausible that the bulk of those emissions come from the oil and petrochemical industries. I'm speaking from a position of ignorance about those countries, though, so if you know better, please speak up.
Also, here are the energy consumption figures for those countries, according to the CIA 2005 factbook. It's interesting to compare the countries' rankings with their carbon emissions: notably, Iceland has the world's highest energy consumption per capita, more than twice that of the United States, but only about 1/3 to 1/2 the carbon emissions of the U.S. Must be nice to live over an oceanic ridge...
#1 Iceland: 28,788.729 kWh per capita
#2 Norway: 23,011.091 kWh per capita
#3 Canada: 15,737.668 kWh per capita
#5 United Arab Emirates: 14,723.099 kWh per capita
#6 Kuwait: 14,687.439 kWh per capita
#9 United States: 12,250.196 kWh per capita
#13 Bahrain: 9,776.906 kWh per capita
#45 Trinidad and Tobago: 5,301.912 kWh per capita
Posted by: Sarah Dasher | January 26, 2007 12:11 AM