The interactive map below reveals how carbon dioxide emissions are distributed globally and how they’ve changed in the last 160 years.
The map is based on WRI’s recently updated CAIT 2.0 data, now published on the Google Public Data Explorer. CAIT 2.0 provides easy, free access to a wealth of global emissions data. Through CAIT 2.0 and Google Public Data Explorer, users can explore the history of emissions in a much more interactive way, through maps and other dynamic charts.
The map shows us how fast the major emitters changed over the last few decades. For more than 100 years since the Industrial Revolution, emissions were dominated by the West. Over the last two decades, however, Asia’s emissions rapidly caught up, with China becoming the world’s largest emitter in 2005.
Meanwhile, many Western countries—such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany—were able to stabilize their absolute and per capita carbon emissions, albeit on a high level. The map below shows a very different picture for per capita emissions, in which industrialized countries still dominate the emissions landscape. However, even in this case, many developing countries are rapidly increasing their per capita emissions.