One of the hard questions in the climate change debate is the degree to which developing nations should be allowed to increase their carbon emissions. The charts below, based on data from the World Bank, show that the regions that reduced extreme poverty over the last 30 years also saw significant increases in carbon emissions. This trend was most pronounced in East Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa, in contrast, had a large increase in poverty and a small decrease in carbon emissions per capita.
I used four cluster bar charts to display changes in extreme poverty and in CO2 emissions for each region. The charts have the same size, margins, fonts, and colors to make them easily comparable. I added segment comparison lines to each chart to show the percentage change. This is a feature that will be introduced in version 7.5 in early 2016. If you are using an earlier version of Mekko Graphics, you can use a data row to show the percentage changes.
An earlier version of this analysis was written by Adam Goldstein and appeared in Emory University’s Climate Change blog post.
Here is the chart in SlideShare to download and edit: