The US, which has announced plans to withdraw from the global climate treaty – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – is more historically responsible for climate change than any other country or group. Carbon Brief analysis shows that the US has emitted a total of 542bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) since 1850, by burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees and other activities. This is the largest contribution to the Earth’s warming climate by far, as shown in the figure below, with China’s 336GtCO2 significantly behind in second and Russia in third at 185GtCO2. Top 10 countries in terms of their cumulative historical CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, cement, land use, land use change and forestry, 1850-2025, billion tonnes. Source: Source: Carbon Brief analysis of figures from Jones et al (2023), Lamboll et al (2023), the Global Carbon Project, CDIAC, Our World in Data, the International Energy Agency and Carbon Monitor. The US is responsible for more than a fifth of the 2,651GtCO2 that humans have pumped into the atmosphere between 1850 and 2025 as a result of fossil fuels, cement and land-use change. China is responsible for another 13%, with the 27 nations of the EU making up another 12%. In total, these cumulative emissions have used up more than 95% of the carbon budget for limiting global warming to 1.5C and are the predominant reason the Earth is already nearly 1.5C hotter than in pre-industrial times. The US share of global warming is even more disproportionate when…
