Consumption-based carbon footprint

What this indicator measures

Consumption-based emissions start with CO₂ produced within a country, subtract emissions embedded in exports and add emissions embedded in imports. Dividing by population produces an average in tonnes of CO₂ per person.

Why Humanity Alert uses it

Territorial emissions can assign the pollution from an exported product only to the producing country. Trade adjustment moves that carbon toward the country where the product or service is consumed, making the measure closer to a national consumption footprint.

How it is displayed

The dashboard shows the latest raw value in tonnes per person together with the reference year and geographic coverage. It is not normalized, given an alert colour or included in the Humanity Alert Score. The four-part social formula therefore remains unchanged.

What it cannot prove

This is a national average, not an individual footprint. It covers fossil fuels and industry but excludes land-use change, deforestation, soils and vegetation. International aviation and shipping are included in the world total but are not allocated to individual countries. Some economies lack sufficient trade data.

Source details

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