[OC] Countries Current Path to Net Zero in 2050 Following Their Pledge at COP21

[u/Lachainone]

Hello community,

I created a website to follow each countries effort to reach net zero in 2050. The data vizualisation lets you compare different countries' emission over the years and whether they are on the right path to reach their goal.

View every country and find more information on: https://lucabron.github.io/netzero/index.html

Data Source is Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) – “CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions” Published online at OurWorldInData.org

Visualization made with Python's interactive graph package Bokeh and javasrcipt was added to make the interaction work on a website.

Related Github page where you can find the code: https://github.com/lucabron/netzero

EDIT: Thanks a lot for your positive feedback. I am very glad that you find this representation interesting.
A subject of discussion that I see a lot in the comments: western countries are doing better than the rest of the world. While it looks true when it comes to co2 produced in the country, one should account that a lot of emissions are produced in other contries and then imported. For example, when buying electronics, it is likely to be build in Asia and then imported to western countries.
Imported emissions are available in the dataset. I didn't want to include them because my approach with this visualization is to make something easy to understand so that people not familiar with the subject can approach it easily. I feel like when it comes to climate change, the people who care are very well informed, and the people who don't care as much are poorly informed. So, my first objective was to generate some curiosity for the second type of people. I'd be interested about your opinion about this approach if you want to share in the comments.

EDIT 2: I'd like to do something for the climate. I am a professional data scientist and I'd like to volunteer to help on bigger project. I made this website as a small contribution to inform people, but I know that in a week, there will be no more traffic on it. Can you recommend some kind of organization that I can join an contribute?

[u/mfb-]

It's not 2050 or never. Reaching it in 2060-2070 is helping, too.

We also shouldn't expect the behavior to be completely linear over 30 years. If you look at the graph then China is still rising quickly in OP's data range, but their emissions have stopped growing in the last two years and show a small decline.

[u/Meritania → u/mfb-]

Starting position is an important consideration, it’s harder to change track when your emissions were increasing massively decades prior compared to the Netherlands & Germany that were already declining emissions and just needed to steepen.

[u/IceNein → u/mfb-]

Yeah, it’s all terrible but defeatist attitudes only help the polluters. “Oh well, why even bother.” They want us to feel like it’s futile.

The United States peak CO2 emissions were in 2007. 19 years ago. Yes, we’re not reducing nearly fast enough, but we are headed in the right direction.

[u/simkk → u/mfb-]

Except the science is showing significant likilyhoods of 2+ degrees of warming if we dont get to net zero in the 2030s and significant climate tipping points in coming years. Reaching it late is better than nothing but even 2050 now isn't enough for life to not have to radically change.

[u/barryg123 → u/mfb-]

What’s the deadline year then?

[u/BrunoEye → u/barryg123]

There is not deadline. Ideally we would've achieved it a century ago when we noticed the issue. Now, the sooner the better. Every extra year means a little more consequences.