The Climate Problem in Data

Two different things are being added together. Which one is still growing?

The global total is flat-ish. The regional composition is not.

Add and remove countries in the chart itself — the entity selector is live.

Coal, oil, gas, cement, flaring. Which fuel would a carbon tax hit hardest?

Shares, not levels. A country can cut emissions and still gain share.

Same data as before, divided by population. The country ranking changes completely.

CO₂ is a stock pollutant. What warms the planet is the integral, not this year’s flow.

This is the chart that international negotiations argue about.

Compare against the annual-by-region chart. Historic responsibility vs. current flows.

Emissions rise with income. Is that a law of nature or a policy choice?

CO₂ per dollar of output. Falling everywhere — but fast enough?

Both indexed to a base year. Where the lines separate, growth and emissions came apart.

Where the smokestack is, vs. who bought the output. We return to this in Part V.

Positive = net importer of embodied CO₂. Evidence on carbon leakage starts here.

How much of world emissions crosses a border before it is consumed.

The same trade flows, per person. Who is outsourcing emissions, and how much?

Redo the income–emissions relationship on a consumption basis. Does it get steeper?

“Cut emissions” means cutting something specific. What, exactly?

The same breakdown as a stacked area. Energy dominates; agriculture and industry are not small.

CO₂ only. Compare against the all-gas version — which sectors shrink?

Agriculture and waste, not power plants. A different policy problem entirely.

Overwhelmingly agricultural. Fertiliser use is the margin here.

Sectoral emissions per person. Where would a per-capita target actually bind?

Transport is a small share. What does this imply about “buy local” as climate policy?

CO₂-equivalent, all gases. Methane and N₂O are included here.

Per-capita, all gases. Compare with the CO₂-only per-capita chart.

From emissions to degrees — the link the Social Cost of Carbon has to price.

The outcome variable. Everything else in this course is about bending this line.

Switch to the Map tab. Warming is not distributed evenly — and neither are the damages.

Every month against its own 1991–2020 baseline. The recent months sit off the top of the historical range.

Pick a country. This is the resolution at which people actually experience the change.

The seasonal cycle, one line per year. Recent years stack at the top.

What the world actually charges for a tonne of CO₂. Compare to SCC estimates in Part III.