Historical Carbon Debts and Credits 1750-2023

Historical contributions of carbon emissions differ widely between nations, constraining climate change negotiations. Cumulative country estimates ignore historical populations, overstating the role of large-population countries. In this paper, we present a global accounting framework. We quantify countries’ over and under-contributions to climate change through carbon debts and credits. We weight cumulative emissions by historical population and compare them to the historical global per capita average since 1750. This framework reveals asymmetries: In our baseline scenario (production-based CO2 emissions from fossil fuels) the United States alone holds 356.6 ± 36.5 Gt CO2 of carbon debt (42.8–52.6% of global debt), while China and India hold 397.8 ± 53.3 Gt CO2 of carbon credits (43.8–57.4% of global credit). Adding CO2 emissions from land use change radically reshapes the map, moving Brazil from the world’s 8th largest creditor to the 3rd largest debtor. Yet, it does not change the position of the US, China and India