Recently I had a chapter published in a new book: A triple bottom line analysis of global consumption. This is an atlas of each nation’s consumption emissions. The chapter was written prior to the pandemic, so perhaps the results are a little dated now - but hopefully still interesting. Here is an excerpt from the book chapter:
Contrary to rising physical impacts such as emissions, the emissions intensity of economic productivity (t-CO2/$ GDP) has declined by one third (Figure 1). The emission intensity improvements suggest progress in reducing the climate impact of the economy. However, the intensity improvements are largely due to an increase in GDP, rather than reduced emissions. Seventy percent of the increase in GDP comes from services where energy intensity is a less robust measures of progress. Nevertheless, increased renewable electricity generation [i], and a proportional decline in domestic manufacturing [ii] have ensured that emissions intensity is less than it might have been. Despite the reductions in emissions intensity, there has not been an absolute reduction in production emissions.
Figure 1: Emissions intensity (t-CO2/$), real GDP (constant price 2010 USD), production emissions (t-CO2), population and manufacturing GVA as a proportion of total industry GVA. All timeseries indexed to a 2000 baseline.
Figure 2 shows how the Australian economy exhibits a tight coupling between growth in affluence, consumption-based emissions and material extraction, along with rising rates of household debt and an almost stable human development measure [iii]. The structure of this developed economy requires rising emissions and material flows, relies on household debt to fund it and provides few social rewards on average for the financial tension and physical impacts it causes. To achieve the promise of decoupling environmental impacts from affluence, the goals and philosophies of modern nation-state economies require fundamental restructuring.
Figure 2: GDP per capita, Human Development Index (HDI), household income-to-debt ratio, consumption-based emissions and consumption-based material extraction. All timeseries are indexed to a 2000 baseline.
[i] United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/AUS
[ii] Department of the Environment and Energy, 2018, Australian Energy Statistics, Commonwealth of Australia
[iii] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019, 5204.0 - Australian System of National Accounts, 2017-18, Commonwealth of Australia