The Cohorts Most Responsible for Carbon Emissions

Mathew Hauer , Florida State University
R. Dean Hardy, University of South Carolina
Emilio Zagheni, Max Planck Institute for demographic Research
Andrew Jorgenson, Boston College

Rarely are those most impacted by climate change the same as those most responsible for global carbon emissions. The disconnect between responsibility and impact has prompted numerous calls for climate reparations, where the calculation of `responsibility' for carbon emissions often reflects the epistemology of the estimate's creator. Assignment of responsibility typically differentiates carbon emissions across space and time but not birth cohort, further complicating assignment of responsibility to young birth cohorts who have yet to emit as much as older cohorts. Using formal demographic methods, we develop an approach to estimate carbon emissions across space, across time, and across the life course creating a unified carbon emissions identity, comparable to other, well-known carbon identities. We estimate the birth cohorts born between 1850 and 2100 with the highest lifetime carbon emissions. We also decompose increases in period-specific carbon emissions into a population size effect and an age-specific emission effect. Our results suggest that carbon emissions pathways play the strongest role in determining which cohorts will have the highest lifetime carbon emissions, with lower pathways suggesting earlier cohorts and higher pathways suggesting later cohorts. Additionally, changes in age-specific carbon emissions, rather than changes in population size, are the overwhelming driver of changes in period-specific carbon emissions.

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 Presented in Session P109. Carbon Emissions and Environmental Policies