Who got us into this mess? Part 3 - today’s big emitters

Yesterday we looked at the countries that bore historical responsibility for our carbon emissions. There is possibly a case to be made that in 1850 we didn’t know any better, but that argument has become less and less plausible as time has gone on and certainly today no country can claim it is not aware of the impact of its greenhouse gas emissions. So which countries are the biggest emitters today?

Using information from Our World in Data, we’ve created a chart showing the top 20 country emitters from 2021.

Many of the same countries feature on both this list and the historical emissions one, but one of the main things that jumps out is that the USA and China have effectively swapped positions. China accounted for just over 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, while the USA was responsible for almost 11%. India is the only other country above 5%, with a contribution of 7.2%. By contrast New Zealand was responsible for 0.13% of the world’s emissions in 2021.