How does trade and consumption conceal our CO₂ emissions?
2020 • Information Visualization
Tools + Skills — Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Excel
Duration — 2 weeks
Data visualization poster showcasing the different CO₂ emissions by nation; compares and contextualizes different CO₂ measurement methods and results, and shows how different methods can affect how we view a nation's CO₂ emissions.
PROMPT
Create a 11x17 poster visualizing carbon dioxide emissions. The poster is intended for a general audience.
MY APPROACH
I explored the topic and found out that there are different methods to calculate a country's CO₂ emissions. Typically, a country's CO₂ emissions is measured by the production-based method — the amount of emissions each country produces. However, some argue that the consumption-based method of measuring CO₂ emissions is much more fair as it takes into account trade and how some countries may outsource a majority of their consumed goods elsewhere — resulting in less CO₂ emissions accounted for domestically and an "export" of CO₂ emissions to another nation. Unlike when using the production-based method, the consumption-based method balances the visualizations to take into account the most productive nations such as China and India.
Using the article and dataset from Our World in Data as reference, I created this poster to contextualize different countries' consumption-based CO₂ emissions and how they differ when calculated using the production-based method. Using a stacked area graph, on the left of the poster is the main visualization that orders which countries consume more CO₂ than they produce, and on the right I explore some outliers and compare different countries, exploring how their trade and history affect their CO₂ emissions.
