Footprint per Capita

The newspaper had a map of each country’s carbon footprint per person. Something like this one from Wikipedia.

carbon dioxide emissions per capita per country

This is one of those graphics that misleads with statistics. The U.S. seems top of the charts here, but one has to recall that the ranking is per person. Compare, for example, China or India, which have many more people than the U.S. In the ranking of emissions per capita, the United States comes in 10th, behind Qatar and other well-known polluters such as Aruba. China is 91st, while India is 133rd. However, considering emissions alone, without dividing by the population, we’re #1, followed closely by China, with Russia and India lagging behind in 3rd and 4th place, respectively.

carbon dioxide emissions by country