Motion plot of relationship between average GHG emissions and income

What is the relationship between average income and greenhouse gas emissions? Below you find a motion plot that can be used to provide some insights by visualizing the relationship between different measures of emissions with GDP per capita across different countries and across time. By pressing the play button, you can see the dynamic development. You can adapt the plot in many ways, e.g. change the variables on the axis, highlight particular countries or add trails.

Some findings:

• Across countries, CO2 emissions per capita have been very strongly correlated with GDP per capita. While in recent years this relationship seems to still exist, it has become weaker.

• For some richer countries, we see how in recent years GDP per capita grows while CO2 emmissions per capita slowly decrease.

• There is also a positive correlation between GDP per capita and the emission of other green house gases.

• Countries with higher average income, typically have lower emissions per $ of GDP

Motion plots have been popularized by the great talks of Hans Rosling’s presentations. For size reasons, I show a quite small selection of countries. On the gapminder website, you can explore many more motion plots with a more comprehensive country list.