The predicted climatic warming by greenhouse gases is one of the big questions of our time, which determines even economic options of the future. Therefore it was interesting to read about an analysis, which gives estimates about the contribution of different countries in this threat.
The first calculation presented a simple calculation of the total amount of carbon dioxide including emissions from fossil fuels as well as from land use and forestry since 1850 up to 2021. There USA is clearly in the first place by its 20 per cent share, and followed from distance by China, Russia, Brasil, Indonesia, Germany, India, United Kingdom, Japan and Canada.
The second calculation is based on the cumulative consumption of each nation. It only covers years from 1990 to 2021. In this calculation top ten includes the same countries as above, and in the same order. Therefore, often highlighted guiltiness of outsourced carbon emissions is not a major issue, although it adds to the share of responsibility accorded to wealthy nations.
The two other calculations are based on emissions per capita, but using different approaches. The first one takes a country’s cumulative emissions in each year and divides it by the number of people living in the country at the time.
According to this calculation Canadians have the highest emissions. Thereafter come people of the USA, Estonia, Australia, Trinidad & Tobago, Russia, Kazakhstan, United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium. My home country, Finland, is in the eleventh place raising it high on the list.
The second approach takes a country’s per capita emissions in each year and adds them up over time, and on top of the list are inhabitants of New Zealand followed by people of Canada, Australia, United States, Argentina, Qatar, Gabon, Malaysia, Republic of Congo and Nicaragua. Finland is not among the top 20.
Taken together, the four classifications above shows that carbon emissions are not a simple case. And therefore politically active actors may select the list that best serves their purposes.
Therefore all of us, who are targeted, should be cautious, and put the claims in a frame. For example, as a Finn, I should agree that consumption of me and my national fellows are causing considerable amounts of carbon compared to most other people, but also remember that our total share of the global emissions is like a drop in an Ocean. And to understand, that our high per capita emissions is largely caused by our geographic location in a cold climate as well as the large area of the country resulting in a higher need of domestic travel than in most other countries.
Actually, I would have liked to see a calculation, where the cumulative consumption of each nation would have been divided by the area of the countries. As a Finn, I would happily prefer to use that as the most important criterion in evaluating the position of each nation in causing the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
My argument is based on the fact, that such a statistics would not reward nations from their increasing population - as the two per capita calculations above do - but rather encourage the nations with exploding population sized to act on this main cause of the global environmental crisis including climate, biodiversity and land use aspects.
