Many of us aren’t in touch with just how much carbon emissions we each consume every year. The results might surprise you!
I’ve used minifigures here as a fun way to communicate this. These show the 2013 carbon per capita for different countries, as well as how this has changed from 1990 – 2013.
Teachers and educators, please feel free to use this for your work! If you like, share your story of how it’s helped you build awareness.
Data from the International Energy Agency, full details at the bottom. Minifigures are scaled using area (height x width) – if you can fit two minifigs of Country A into one minifig of Country B, it means Country A has half the carbon per capita of Country B. I found this more intuitive than just scaling for height.
Gallery 1: Carbon per Capita for each country in 2013
Ranked from largest to smallest carbon impact. Each snapshot includes a minifigure for the average World carbon per capita, and for the average carbon per capita for the G7 group of countries. Click to open up a carousel of the full-size pictures.
Gallery 2: Change in Carbon per Capita from 1990-2013 for each country
Ranked from greatest carbon cut to highest carbon growth (with the World as a first reference). A rise in carbon per capita is shown with a red circle, a fall with a blue circle. Click to open up a carousel of the full-size pictures.
Last but not least: Carbon per Capita in 2013: The Family Photo!
OK, I had some fun with these. Someone suggested that it would be easier to see all of them next to each other, so here are the two family photos I’ve put together. The stark reality of just how different we each are is much more obvious here.
Family at the Columbus Glacier in Alaska!
Sunset over the Family…
Carbon per Capita using Minifigs by Little Climate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Graphics are based on IEA data from CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion: 2015 Edition © OECD/IEA 2015, www.iea.org/statistics. Licence: www.iea.org/t&c; as modified by Little Climate. Minifigs created using Lego Digital Designer: http://ldd.lego.com; as modified by Little Climate.
CO2 Emissions from fossil fuel combustion / population: Extract of IEA data shown below for a selection of countries and regions, ranked by % change between 1990 and 2013.