The last blog post on this site talked about how the world has 420 billion tons of CO2 left to burn if we want to keep our chances at limiting warming below 1.5 degrees C at 2 in 3. The post before that mused about individual actions. I’ve been thinking about how these two are connected.
The below table shows the carbon emissions of the average person in the US, France, India and Kenya in 2019, per Our World in Data, and the number of years we would have before hitting the 420 gigatonne limit if everyone consumed as does the average person in that country (countries chosen to illustrate spectrum – note that Bhutan is carbon negative):
| Country | Average CO2 emissions per person (consumption-based) (2019 per Our World in Data) |
|---|---|
| USA | 17.10t |
| France | 6.48t |
| India | 1.76t |
| Kenya | 0.53t |
To restate in words, if everyone consumed as does the average American, we’d blow through that 420 gigatonnes in just over 3 years. If we consumed as does the average Kenyan, we’d have almost 100 years before reaching that limit.
Why do some pollute so much more than others?
Despite knowing about climate change and the ways to combat it, Americans live in enormous houses, with ever more appliances (with almost no effort put into ensuring these are maintained or used efficiently), use increasingly large private cars to get around, and make dietary choices that have enormous climate impacts. We use tons of energy to heat and cool these homes and the cavernous stores and malls in which we buy (or, increasingly, store and then deliver) the things we buy, and to drive our cars around the communities that we’ve built around these ideas.
It didn’t need to be that way, but it’s hard to imagine it being otherwise today. And yet in many countries around the world people are living differently. We don’t need new technologies or innovations – we need to have the willingness to embrace a different way of life. Too bad we lack the will.