China, Qatar and U.S. lead, depending on how you judge emissions

, Senior Global Correspondent
Source: Per Capita: Our World in Data, Absolute: Our World in Data • CO2e = carbon dioxide equivalent. Greenhouse gas emissions include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide from all sources.

The annual United Nations climate conference known as COP29 will convene in just a few weeks in Azerbaijan. Each country will arrive in Baku with a profile of its greenhouse gas emissions profile and a national plan to reduce them.

Yet many of the nearly 200 nations attending the meeting are paying attention not just to overall emissions, but also to each country’s emissions per person. The two measures paint very different pictures of the problem, leading countries to conflicting conclusions about how to address global warming.

By national totals, the world’s current leading greenhouse gas emitter is China by a long shot — just under 14 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually — followed by the United States (six billion metric tons) and then India (four billion metric tons). But the U.S. emitted most of the greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution started over a century ago.

China and India have huge populations, though — more than 1.4 billion people each, or four times the U.S. population of 345 million people. That means on a per person basis, the Chinese produce 9.8 metric tons of CO2 equivalent each year and Indians produce 2.9 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2022. Americans produced 17.7 metric tons per person.

At the other end of the spectrum, Qatar produces a comparatively tiny amount of greenhouse gas emissions overall, 190 million metric tons in 2022 — not even 2% of China’s emissions. But with a population of fewer than three million people, that breaks down to over 70 metric tons annually for each Qatari resident, about four times what Americans produce per person and 24 times more than what Indians emit per person.

At COP29, financing the energy transition is going to be the major topic of discussion — and already is a key point of tension. Populous nations like China, India and Nigeria at varying stages of development say more fully developed economies like the U.S. and Europe have a responsibility to reduce their per capita emissions, while developing countries should be allowed to increase their overall emissions in order to support critical economic development.

Wealthy economies, however, argue that all countries should be reducing overall emissions as quickly as possible.

Both arguments have merit, which could make finding common ground elusive.