WORLDBANK Data Visualiser shows it:

Standard of live and CO2 not correlated

2010-01-17 (3 pages – abstract, thanks to Prashant Kapoor for the hint)

By Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Feist, University of Innsbruck and Passive House Institut

Figure 1: How CO2 is related to the standard of living

y-axis: CO2-Emissions per capita (metric tons/yr/person) plotted against

x-axis: GNI (income) per capita (1000 US$/yr/person) as an indicator of living standard1000=K

Methodology

The tool for creating these kind of plots is published by world bank, see:

http://beta.worldbank.org/node/5249

How much CO2 is required to make a good living?

To look for this the tool was used (see figure 1 above): Show the per capita CO2-emissions plotted against the per capita income (which is widely expected to be an indicator for the living standard, although this might be disputed, too).

Let us have a look only at the highest income group: These are the countries with some 40.000 $ average income (GNI) per person and year (or almost that income). You find these on the right hand near to the orange square. Eight of these countries, which all do have almost the same k$/yr/person are highlighted and the numbers for CO2-emissions per capita 2007 are given in the table given here, too:

Country (or group of countries)

Per capita CO2-Emissions 2007

Mg/yr/person (approx.)

Kuwait

USA, Canada, Australia

Japan, Germany

Sweden, Switzerland

5,4

Let us just exclude Kuwait again, because that is a quite specific case as a country with a

large quantity of superabundant crude oil.

Superhigh-CO2: The highest emissions of CO2 per capita world wide comes from USA,

Canada and Australia: Having some 20 Mg/yr/person each.

High-CO2: With the same net income, countries like Japan and Germany only produce

almost half of the CO2: some 10 Mg/yr/person, which is far too much, anyhow. The reduced CO2 emissions do not cause any problem for the standard of living in these countries compared to the countries with superhigh-CO2.

Medium-CO2: In Sweden and Switzerland, countries which even do have a slightly higher

GNI per person than all the other countries, the CO2-emissions per capita are down to some 5,4 Mg/yr/person (contemporary global average is some 4,38 Mg/yr/person, not much less, but with a much lower income of some k$/yr/person).

Source: [IEA 2009, seehttp://www.iea.org/co2highlights/

Even form data from the past it is therefore easy to show, that high CO2-emissions are by no means an indicator of a high standard of living – and not at all required to maintain a high income. This is not caused by product import phenomena, as can easy be seen by the fact that Germany and Japan are still the highest per capita exporting countries in the world. The differences in emissions are caused by efficiency and by energy mix, mainly. Sweden and Switzerland both have very early worked to improve efficiency – and both have high contributions of renewable energy (water power).

Still, even the emissions in CO2 from Sweden and Switzerland are too high. These should be reduced to some 2 MG/yr/person in average for all mankind – what means these have to be halved compared to contemporary world emission levels. This is possible: Still the efficiencies can be doubled compared to those already used in average in Sweden and Switzerland – and the production of renewable energy can be increased.

How much CO2 is required for high quality of life?

To look for this the tool was used again (see figure 2): Show the per capita CO2-emissions plotted against the life expectancy (which is widely accepted to be one indicator for the quality of life).