Who got us into this mess? Part 2 - historical responsibility

We’ve been release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere ever since we learned to use fire. However it would probably be unfair to blame our early ancestors for our current predicament given their lives were otherwise very low impact on the natural environment. It is only since the Industrial Revolution that our addiction to fossil fuels has reached any kind of scale, so which countries have caused the most carbon emissions in the period since then?

Carbon Brief has done a wonderful piece of analysis that gives us the answer. The chart below shows the top 20 country carbon emitters from 1850-2021.

The chart gives us a snapshot, but what’s even more interesting is how the rankings have changed over time. Take a look at this minute-long video:

As Carbon Brief explains, a single number doesn’t tell the whole story because the headline number for each country is made up of CO2 emissions from two different sources - fossil fuels, and land use and forestry. The United States, Russia and China took an early lead in CO2 emissions as they cut down their forests for agricultural land and fuel. Western European countries then started to rise up the rankings due to their use of fossil fuels (particularly coal) as they industrialised - those countries had already cleared their forests by 1850. Brazil and Indonesia then emerge as heavy emitters during the 20th century as their rainforests were cleared - but it is fair to blame those countries or the multi-national corporations that profited from this deforestation?

What the numbers do tell us is that the United States is responsible for just over 20% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1850, followed by China with 11.4% and Russia with 6.9%.