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Asymmetric effects of economic growth and decline on CO2 emissions

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 762–764 (2012)Cite this article

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Estimating the trajectory of CO2 emissions, an important part of planning for climate change mitigation and adaptation, depends in part on understanding how these emissions are influenced by the economy. Although researchers have developed sophisticated models of the connections between the economy and CO2 emissions, prominently used modelling approaches implicitly assume that the effect on emissions of declining GDP per capita is symmetrical with the effect of growth in GDP per capita1,2. Here, analysing available data from 1960 to 2008 (see Methods), I find that in years where GDP per capita shrinks, CO2 emissions per capita do not decline in equal proportion to the amount by which they increase with economic growth. One important implication of this finding is that CO2 emissions depend not only on the size of the economy, but also on the pattern of growth and decline that led to that size.

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Figure 1: Estimated effect of annual growth in GDP per capita on growth in CO2 emissions per capita.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, 97403, Oregon, USA

    Richard York

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  1. Richard York
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Correspondence to Richard York.

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York, R. Asymmetric effects of economic growth and decline on CO2 emissions. Nature Clim Change 2, 762–764 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1699

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