Greening Prosperity Stripes 2: Consumption-Based Refinement

Alexander Mihailov ()

No em-dp2026-09, Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading

Abstract: This paper is a sequel to my 'greening prosperity stripes' article, Mihailov (2026). It refines the calculation of these illustrative color stripes to take into account consumption-based, or trade-embodied, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, not production-based CO2 emissions as in the earlier study, thus revealing the influence of, in particular, offshoring polluting industries. Yet, the refined indicator comes at the cost of losing nearly half of the countries in the world and most country groupings in the World Bank classification, due to unavailability of such data. Nevertheless, it offers a more precise - and, perhaps, fairer - image, relative to the original production-based greening prosperity stripes, of how green(ing) is the prosperity for most countries in the world. The novelty of this sequel paper consists in illustrating clearly the difference between the two indicators of greening prosperity, in pairs of comparative graphs. Because images and colors have power to impress human minds deeper than words, the greening prosperity stripes, in addition to raising awareness and mobilizing immediate climate policy action worldwide, can essentially be used to track the progress of each country in comparison with other countries toward the goal of net zero. Ideally, an annually updated public-domain website could serve this crucial monitoring function at a global scale in a straightforward way with immediate online illustration and verification.

Keywords: consumption-based (or trade-embodied) greening prosperity stripes and maps; production-based greening prosperity stripes and maps; comparative colormap data visualization; communicating science to raise public awareness; tracking progress to net zero (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C82 F64 O44 Q51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2026-09-12
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