The nation-states of climate change

Feel guilty yet?

Posted by Eric de Place (Guest Contributor) at 9:41 AM on 28 Jun 2007

Read more about: climate | greenhouse-gas emissions | United States

Ever wondered if your state's climate policy really makes a difference in the big global scheme of things? If so, here's a little map I made.

For each state, the map shows a nation with equivalent greenhouse-gas emissions from energy.

western map_300

The full U.S. version is here.

When I've shown drafts to people, almost everyone wants to compare populations. The western states population comparison is after the jump. The full data are here(xls).

Number of people (in millions), 2003

pop table

I find the full U.S. map a bit overwhelming. Even more so when I realize that the 2003 population of the U.S. -- less than 300 million -- has the same climate impact as the more than 1.5 billion people represented by the other countries listed on the map.

And now, a word about my methodology. All data are from the U.S. Department of Energy. Ghg data are an average of the period from 2001 to 2003; population data are for 2003. Emissions are from energy use only and they do not include carbon sinks. Countries are considered "equivalent" if their total emissions are within 10 percent of a state's emissions. Obviously, there a million ways to slice these comparisons since many states and countries have similar levels of emissions.

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49th Parallel

Interestingly, Washington State also holds America in the same high regard as Iraq.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 9:55 AM on 28 Jun 2007

South Africa, please!

that is fascinating - please can you figure out which state South Africa lines up to best...

Whiskerfish

by Whiskerfish at 11:30 AM on 28 Jun 2007

this is interesting

There are some confounding issues with this comparison:

a) It's haphazard how the countries were chosen: for example, Vermont (0.6 mil people) was compared with Cote D'Ivorie (16 + mil, incorrectly called Ivory Coast) while neighboring New Hampshire (1.2 mil) was compared with Estonia (1.6 mil).
Side note: The latter is actually a very favorable comparison, since Estonia is smaller in area and warmer due to the Baltic Sea as opposed to mountainous regions of NH.

b) I think the major issue is the difference in area when comparing carbon emissions per state with populations of the countries. The emissions in many of the other countries are likely lower per capita due to the higher density of the population and lesser need to commute. Which is fair in terms of carbon emissions, but remember that these countries' natural capital in many cases is depleted. I mean that nearly every corner of these countries is either unusable or is used for agriculture and other anthropocentric activities.

However, I do think that this might be an effective graph for a non-discriminating viewer.

by atreyger at 11:41 AM on 28 Jun 2007

correction

I should check these things before I post:

Estonia's area is slightly less than twice that of NH.

Apologies for misinformation.

by atreyger at 11:45 AM on 28 Jun 2007

Couple of replies

Whiskerfish, South Africa's emissions are almost exactly the same as California's. CA (which is the most populous state in the US) is the second highest-emitting state, after Texas. Not surprisingly, South Africa is by far the highest emitter in Africa.

Atreyger, my selection of countries was widly haphazard, in a sense. But it was actually a fairly pre-determined process because there are a lot of mid-level emitting states and not that many mid-level emitting countries. So I more or less had to just throw countries on the map when I could find matches. (Otherwise, states like, say, Tennessee would be labelled with the names of about 5 small countries.)

And there's this: there a million different ways to slice this stuff and quibble over it-- Population, land mass, GDP, resource base, history, climate, whatever. (I provided a population comparison because way more people ask for that than anything else.) There's no such thing as a strictly apples-to-apples comparison and I don't really care.

by Eric de Place at 12:05 PM on 28 Jun 2007

S Africa

thanks for that! I was thinking it might even be Texas - this country is massively inefficient in the way it uses energy - we have some of the world's largerst coal-fired plants and what is rumoured to be the world's biggest point-source emitter of CO2, the Sasol coal-to-liquid fuel plant at Secunda - Google Earth users will find it at

26deg33min15sec South 29deg09min48sec East

or just type "Secunda, South Africa" into the search box.

Whiskerfish

by Whiskerfish at 2:06 AM on 29 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

Per capita emmisions

Per capita emmisions

Sure beats the GOP policy of per GDP emmisions.

by GreyFlcn at 7:23 PM on 01 Jul 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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