Thursday, December 04, 2014

CO2 Responsibility By Year of Birth (Honors to 1968)

“Today we face the possibility that the global environment may be 
destroyed, yet no one will be responsible. This is a new problem.”
-- Dale Jamieson

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So who's responsible? Tough question -- but at least we can calculate how much CO2 you've emitted per year, since you were born. If you're an American. If you were born after 1948. Excluding emissions due to land use changes. And assuming your emissions are average:


Those Americans born in 1968 have the highest per capita emissions per year (though not, of course, the largest cumulative emissions). Assuming they're still alive.

US per capita emissions peaked in 1973, at 22.3 tonnes CO2/yr, and are now (2013) at 17.1 t CO2/yr -- a decrease of 23%. So the record set by 1968 babies will probably never be broken, and,they will go down in history as the most CO2-profligate emitters in history.

Unless someone from Qatar beats them.

Data: US CO2 emissions (from energy consumption, US population

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