Greenhouse-Gases Emissions by Countries

L. David Roper
http://www.roperld.com/personal/roperldavid.htm
4 April, 2016

Carbon-Dioxide Emissions

The best reference I have found for recent data of carbon-dioxide emissions for different countries is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions. The data for the countries with the highest emissions for 2012, the latest year for which data are available, are:

Country
CO2 emissions
% of emissions
per capita emissions
Times World
Times-World x %
  World 34,500,000   4.9    
 China 9,860,000 28.58% 7.1 1.45 41.41%
 United States 5,190,000 15.04% 16.4 3.35 50.35%
 India 1,970,000 5.71% 1.6 0.33 1.86%
 Russia 1,770,000 5.13% 12.4 2.53 12.98%
 Japan 1,320,000 3.83% 10.4 2.12 8.12%
 Germany 810,000 2.35% 9.7 1.98 4.65%
 South Korea 640,000 1.86% 13 2.65 4.92%
 Canada 560,000 1.62% 16 3.27 5.30%
 United Kingdom 490,000 1.42% 7.7 1.57 2.23%

There are two important country values to notice: the total emissions and the emissions per capita for a country. I include both of these in an index I call Times-World x % Emissions (TW%E), which is the product of the % of emissions and the ratio of the per-capita emissions for a country over the world per-capita emissions. The last column of the table gives that index. The table below orders the 10 countries according to that index:

Country
CO2 emissions
% of emissions
per capita emissions
Times World
Times-World x %
  World 34,500,000   4.9    
 United States 5,190,000 15.04% 16.4 3.35 50.35%
 China 9,860,000 28.58% 7.1 1.45 41.41%
 Russia 1,770,000 5.13% 12.4 2.53 12.98%
 Japan 1,320,000 3.83% 10.4 2.12 8.12%
 Canada 560,000 1.62% 16 3.27 5.30%
 South Korea 640,000 1.86% 13 2.65 4.92%
 Germany 810,000 2.35% 9.7 1.98 4.65%
 United Kingdom 490,000 1.42% 7.7 1.57 2.23%
 India 1,970,000 5.71% 1.6 0.33 1.86%

I believe that this TW%E index gives a reasonable view of the responsibility of countries for emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The U.S. and China have by far the largest responsibility for carbon-dioxide emissions.

It is important to note that much of the carbon-dioxide emissions of China is due to production of goods to sell in the U.S.

Methane Emissions

Of course, there are other greenhouse gases, the most important of which is the truly dangerous methane. However, as the following graph shows global-warming radiative forcing due to methane in the atmosphere is much smaller than for carbon dioxide:

Using a similar type of index for methane emissions as was used for carbon-dioxide emissions above:

Country Name
Methane emissions in kilotonnes CO2 equivalent
Population
% emissions
per capita x 1000
Times World
Times-World x %
World 7,515,150.3 7,263,838,600   1.03    
China 1,642,257.6 1,366,990,000 21.85% 1.20 1.16 25.38%
Russia 533,546.0 146,149,200 7.10% 3.65 3.53 25.05%
Brazil 443,288.9 203,212,000 5.90% 2.18 2.11 12.44%
United States 524,688.1 318,816,000 6.98% 1.65 1.59 11.11%
Australia 122,548.9 23,612,700 1.63% 5.19 5.02 8.18%
Canada 104,499.8 35,540,419 1.39% 2.94 2.84 3.95%
India 621,479.7 1,260,160,000 8.27% 0.49 0.48 3.94%
Indonesia 218,929.1 252,164,800 2.91% 0.87 0.84 2.44%
Iran 115,333.9 77,775,100 1.53% 1.48 1.43 2.20%
Thailand 104,410.5 64,871,000 1.39% 1.61 1.56 2.16%
Vietnam 111,337.5 89,708,900 1.48% 1.24 1.20 1.78%
Pakistan 155,236.3 188,020,000 2.07% 0.83 0.80 1.65%
Mexico 115,858.0 119,713,203 1.54% 0.97 0.94 1.44%
Bangladesh 103,079.7 157,047,000 1.37% 0.66 0.63 0.87%

China and Russia have the largest responsibility for methane emissions, followed by Brazil and the U.S..

Many think that the most important number is the amount of greenhouse gases that are currently in the atmosphere. China is not even in the ball park of this number compared to the U.S. We owe a great debt to the rest of the world to atone for our profligate past behavior of dumping carbon into the atmosphere!