18 Sept 2026 #carbon #cartogram #emissions
In 1750 every tonne of fossil carbon dioxide anyone recorded came from one island. Today China alone emits more than the next four countries combined.

Every country on this map is resized so that its area matches the carbon dioxide it emits each year, and the whole thing runs from 1750 to 2024. It starts at 9.3 million tonnes and ends at 37.4 billion. In between: Britain is still 96% of the recorded total in 1800 and below half by 1855; the United States passes Britain in 1888 and holds the top of the map for 116 years; the American share hits 55% in 1945, the highest it ever gets; China sits third on 8% in 1980 and passes the United States in 2006. The map gets redrawn three times, and each time it is the same mechanism — somewhere industrialising at speed on fuel it had underneath it.

Episode two of MAPPED. Every figure on screen is sourced.

⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00 275 Years of Carbon, Mapped
0:08 One Island, Three Quarters of the Map
0:34 China Does Not Appear Until 1907
1:15 Britain Falls Below Two Thirds
1:35 America Rises on a Continent of Coal
2:02 1888: The United States Passes Britain
2:22 Three Countries, 70% of the Map
2:57 The Wall Street Crash Takes a Quarter
3:21 1950: America is 44% of the World
4:09 China Enters the Map at 8%
4:32 Europe Peaks in 1990, Then Falls
5:06 2006: China Passes the United States
6:14 37 Billion Tonnes, and Asia is 63%
6:25 China Alone Beats the Next Four Combined
6:46 Who Actually Put It There
7:09 Per Person, the Ranking Changes Again

📊 KEY DATA
• 9.3 million tonnes — the whole recorded world in 1750, all of it British, about two hours of today’s emissions
• 96% — Britain’s share of the recorded total in 1800, fifty years into the industrial revolution
• 1907, 1868, 1858 — the years China, Japan and India first appear in this record; before that they are not zero, they are uncounted
• 62% → below 50% — Britain between 1850 and 1855, while its own emissions were still rising
• 1888 — the United States passes Britain, and from 1890 holds the top of the map for 116 years
• 34% / 21% / 17% — the US, Britain and Germany in 1900, about 70% of the map between them
• 55% — the American share in 1945, the highest the United States ever reaches
• 10 billion tonnes in 1964, 20 billion in 1986 — the second ten billion took 22 years, the first took two centuries
• 8% → 33% — China between 1980 and today, an eightfold rise, most of it inside twenty years
• 12.29 Gt — China in 2024, more than the United States, India, Russia and Japan combined
• 24% / 16% — the United States and China as shares of ALL fossil CO2 ever emitted, 1750 to 2024
• 59% vs 29% — Europe and North America’s share of the cumulative total, against the annual one
• 14 / 9 / 2 tonnes — emissions per person in the United States, China and India

🔍 SOURCES
• Global Carbon Budget via Our World in Data, territorial fossil CO2, 1750–2024 — https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
• Global Carbon Project, Global Carbon Budget 2024 — https://globalcarbonbudget.org/
• Also cited: UN World Population Prospects 2024, for the per-person and share-of-population figures

Pre-1900 figures are reconstructions from records of coal mined and traded, not measurements of the air, and coverage before 1830 is thin — countries drawn in grey are ones nobody was counting yet, not ones emitting nothing. Borders are modern throughout.

🔗 MORE EVERYTHING ECON
• YouTube: / @everythingecon
• TikTok: / everythingecon
• Instagram: / everythingecon
• X: https://x.com/EverythingEc0n
• Newsletter: https://econcoaching.com/newsletter/
• Shop: https://econcoaching.com/shop/

Subscribe for the data behind the economy — the world’s data, drawn to scale.

[…]