A scroll-driven state of play

Your carbon footprint, to scale

In the early 2000s, BP told the world that we need to watch our personal carbon footprints. Let's do a bit of a check up on how that's working out...

A few years ago there was a great graphic about how much a billion dollars really is, so here is a similar examination with CO2. Every square is drawn with its area in proportion to what is emitted in its stated time frame. At the first stop, one pixel is one kilogram of CO2. From there the view zooms out as the squares grow, so each pixel on your screen stands for more and more, otherwise we would need nearly two thousand IMAX screens side by side to draw it. If you keep scrolling, you will learn more about the potential impacts of these emissions and what role Australia can play in shaping a better future.

New to climate science? Open the crash course below first.

Crash course on climate change

Why CO2 warms the planetAs our lovely hot sun warms the ground, some of that heat bounces back off towards space. Gases like CO2 and methane catch some of it on the way out. For a long time this was great for humanity, because without them Earth would average about -18°C instead of about 15°C. The trouble is that the more CO2 there is, the more heat is retained.

How we know it's usBefore industrialisation, for every million molecules of air, 280 were carbon dioxide. Over the last century that has grown to about 425. Carbon from fossil fuels has a chemical fingerprint that volcanoes and oceans don't, and it is the one showing up in the air. The IPCC calls human influence on warming "unequivocal", with about 1.1°C of warming since the late 1800s.

Why 1.5 degreesUnless we can pull a whole lot of that carbon back out, the extra CO2 already up there will keep heating the planet. In 2015, nearly every country signed the Paris Agreement, promising to limit their emissions so as to hold warming well below 2°C. While there would still be devastating changes to the planet, 1.5°C of warming was identified as an ideal ceiling.

What net zero meansWhile carbon is pumped into the atmosphere, there are natural processes that also drain it back out. Each year the oceans, forests and soil capture a certain amount of the carbon in the air. We are producing far more than can be caught. It's like an all you can eat restaurant, where they pile about twice the food on your plate for every bite you take. Net zero means balancing what we put up with what gets taken out, so the pile stops growing.*

Scroll to zoom out

At the first stop 1 px = 1 kg CO2, and the view zooms out from there, so each pixel on screen stands for more CO2 at every stop. Every square is an amount emitted in a stated period. An average Australian's year, on screen now: wide. * marks an estimate.

A word on the largest polluters...

A 2021 study by Supran and Naomi Oreskes went through about 180 ExxonMobil communications from 1977 to 2014. It found the company repeatedly pointing attention at how consumers use energy, which draws it away from the company's own role in extracting and selling fossil fuels.

The system we live in was built for growth, not balance, which is why individual action alone cannot fix it. The fix sits in industries and infrastructure.

What role does Australia play?

The standard line is that Australia is about 1% of global emissions, so what we do hardly matters. Every country has a version of that line, and the sum of all of them is the 57.7 billion tonnes a year. We are a middle power: too small to fix this alone, big enough that what we sell, enact and say can have influence. Doubt it? Our communications minister, Anika Wells, was just named to the TIME100 Next list of rising stars for the under-16 social media ban.

Australia has a lot to lose, too. A review of 131 studies in Science put Australia and New Zealand among the highest-risk regions for climate-driven extinction, with 14% of species predicted to be lost.*

What is at stake: 1.5 versus 2 degrees

These are model ranges with stated confidence. Both ends of every range are worse than today. For a clear look at what climate scientists can and cannot say about the future, and why there is always a degree of uncertainty, watch Neil Halloran's How Sure Are Climate Scientists, Really?

Some quick stats...

Unfortunately, since 2021, climate has been slipping out of the news cycle and down people's priority lists. Scroll.

Cost of living now tops the list of issues Australians name: 62% in June 2026, up from 28% in 2021. Yet 89% of people still want their government to do more on climate, and 69% would give 1% of their income, though people guess only 43% of others would.

What about solutions?

Same idea, pointed the other way. Scroll, and the red square is cut down one slice at a time, using only measures that the United Nations Environment Programme says exist today. These are what is technically possible. Making it happen is the hard part.

Humanity's annual emissions in 2035. The dashed white square is the 1.5 degree path. * Technical potential, an estimate.

What Australia could do now

The International Energy Agency finds that more than 80% of the cuts needed by 2030 come from technologies available today. There is a payoff, too. CSIRO finds renewables supported by storage are still the lowest-cost new power, while central bank climate modelling finds that on current global policies, which point to about 3 degrees of warming, Australia loses about $7 trillion in national income between now and 2050, with each Australian about $7,300 a year worse off by 2050.*

Australia has taken some steps and has a long way to go. The tabs below cover what is already law, what has been promised but is not law, and what scientists say should come next.

  • 43%cut in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, with net zero by 2050, both written into the Climate Change Act 2022
  • 4.9%a year is how much each of about 215 of our biggest industrial sites, like mines, smelters and gas plants, has to cut its emissions until 2030. The catch: they can buy offsets instead of cutting. The Climate Council wants offsets capped at 5 to 10% of a site's baseline by 2035
  • CarsThe New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Act 2024 sets emissions limits for new cars from 2025. Better trucks and more public transport are worth about 1.1 billion tonnes each globally, per UNEP
  • $22.7 bnBudget-fundedover 10 years for Future Made in Australia: green metals, critical minerals processing, hydrogen and clean manufacturing

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Method and sources
Scale and atoms
Before any zooming, one pixel is 1 kg. A square holding N kg is drawn √N pixels on each side, so area is proportional to emissions. Sub-pixel squares are drawn at true size and fade. The ring around the people squares is an annotation and is not to scale.
Night of lights
10 LED bulbs × 10 W × 10 hours = 1 kWh, at roughly 0.63 kg CO2e per kWh (Australian grid average factor, published by DCCEEW). Varies by state and year.
Phone
Per year at a two-year replacement cycle: 10.7 kg materials and parts, +2.7 assembly, +1.9 distribution, +1.9 charging, −0.8 end-of-life recycling = 16.4 kg. Counting the mobile network adds 26.4 kg, for about 43 kg.
People
Australian fossil CO2 per person in 2024: about 14.1 t (World Bank, JRC-EDGAR). World average: about 4.7 t, same basis. The lower-emitting half of people averages about 1.6 t CO2e each (World Inequality Report 2022, consumption-based, all gases, 2019). The three figures use different bases, so treat comparisons as indicative.
Sydney to Singapore
Chosen as the busiest Australian international route by passengers in BITRE's monthly city-pair tables: Sydney to Singapore was first in November 2025 and May 2026, and Melbourne to Singapore was first in December 2025 with Sydney second. Sydney to Auckland was busiest by seats in 2024 (about 1.6 million, OAG via KarryOn) but ranks third to fifth by passengers lately. I could not read BITRE's year-ended table, so "busiest" here means the latest monthly rankings. Emissions: about 10 litres of fuel per km for an A350-900 (Aerocorner) x about 6,300 km x 0.8 kg per litre is roughly 50 t of fuel, x 3.15 = about 158 t CO2. That is an estimate for one twin-engine widebody. An A380 on the same sector burns well above that. CO2 only, no contrails or other non-CO2 effects. The 300-seat figure behind "half a tonne each" is an assumption.
Solutions chart
Potentials are UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2024 sectoral reductions available in 2035 at costs up to US$200 per tonne CO2e, against a 2035 current-policies baseline of 57 Gt. UNEP's total is about 41 Gt (range 36 to 46) after subtracting 3.9 Gt of overlaps. Slices used: electricity 13.0, forests 8.35, industry 5.6 (7.7 aggregated, less 1.1 for autonomous implementation and 1.0 for the electricity overlap, my netting), transport 4.8, farms and food 4.41 (agriculture 2.01 plus demand side 2.4), fossil fuel methane 1.7, fluorinated gases 1.4, buildings 1.2 (direct only), waste 1.0. These sum to 41.46 Gt, leaving about 15.5 Gt (about a 73% cut of the 57). Whether that would tip the planet into net carbon removal depends on how much carbon forests, soil and oceans keep absorbing as the climate warms, which is uncertain, so the closing line is a possibility, not a forecast. These are technical potentials, not predictions: UNEP warns the measures cannot simply be added because they overlap and compete, and that its potentials face real-life barriers such as retrofitting about 1% of buildings a year in IEA countries against the 2.5% needed. Its sector ranges are wide (forests 3.5 to 11.7). It nets 3.9 Gt for the electricity overlap with buildings (2.9) and industry (1.0), and applies no correction for fossil methane, which falls anyway as fossil fuel use falls. UNEP's industry measures sum to 8.8 against an aggregate of 7.7. Colour runs from red at 57 to green as the square reaches the 1.5 degree path at 25.
World in 1750
About 9.2 million t CO2 for 1750, from the Global Carbon Budget 2024 fossil emissions series (0.0025 billion t of carbon, times 3.664). Estimates this early are rough. The series has no land-use emissions before 1850, so this is fossil fuels only and the true human total was higher.
Formula 1
Formula 1's own footprint figure of 256,551 t CO2 for a race season, covering scopes 1, 2 and 3, as reported by Motorsport Week in November 2019. Logistics were 45%, business travel 27.7%, facilities and factories 19.3%, event operations 7.3% and the power units (race fuel) 0.7%. The report did not state the year, so 2019 is inferred. Its season has changed since, so treat this as a snapshot.
Australian beef
Meat & Livestock Australia's red meat emissions update (2023 report): beef cattle about 48.5 Mt CO2e gross (agriculture 46.6 plus energy 1.9) and about 38.4 Mt net of land-use removals, out of a red meat total of about 60 Mt gross and 45.8 Mt net. The gross figures are derived from the report's tables, and an industry body produced it. A separate MLA news item put the industry's net emissions at 31 Mt in 2021 under an earlier accounting, so treat the figure as an estimate.
Burned exports
Climate Analytics estimates about 1,150 Mt CO2 from burning Australian coal and gas exports in 2023, plus about 46 Mt emitted in Australia to produce and move them. It is about three times Australia's domestic fossil CO2 of 383 Mt, which is the bar on the "All of Australia" stop. Australia is the third-largest fossil fuel exporter. These emissions occur overseas, so they sit in other countries' inventories.
Readiness tags
The Ready today, Mostly ready and Partly ready tags on the solutions chart are my plain-language summary of how commercial each group of measures is. They are not UNEP classifications. The IEA supports the overall picture: more than 80% of the cuts needed by 2030 come from technologies available today, and about 35% of the cuts needed by 2050 come from technologies not yet commercially available.
Renewables line
Ember Yearly Electricity Data, world, renewables share of total generation for each year 2000 to 2025 (18.7% in 2000, 33.5% in 2025). Ember's Global Electricity Review 2026 headline is 33.8% against coal's 33.0%, a slightly different cut of the same data, so this page quotes the yearly dataset for the line.
Opinion line
Lowy Institute Poll, share of Australians who say global warming is a serious and pressing problem that needs action now, 2006 to 2026. No poll was run in 2007, so the line joins 2006 to 2008. The 2026 reading (49%) is the latest poll.
Law, target or proposal
Each tile in the final section carries a status. "In law" means written into legislation: the Climate Change Act 2022 (43% by 2030, net zero by 2050, no 2035 target), the Safeguard Mechanism rules (4.9% a year baseline decline, offsets allowed) and the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Act 2024. "Target", "announced" and "pledge" mean a government commitment that is not in the Act, including the 82% renewables target, the 62 to 70% 2035 target and the Global Methane Pledge. "Budget-funded" is the Future Made in Australia package, a budget measure rather than a single law. "Proposed" tiles are recommendations from scientists or research bodies (Climate Targets Panel, Climate Council, a 2023 open letter from more than 250 scientists, the Australian Academy of Science) and the CSIRO FutureFeed trial result, none of which is government policy. The coal figure (612 Mt in 2027 to 488 Mt in 2035) is a government projection reported by Climate Action Tracker, run-of-mine, and not a policy outcome.
Write to your MP
The letter is assembled in your browser from the options you tick and your own sentence. Nothing is sent or stored. The postcode lookup uses a built-in list of postcodes and suburbs for the 150 federal electorates under the 2025 boundaries (pmcau/AustralianElectorates, from Australian Electoral Commission data). Some postcodes cross electorate lines, so the page shows the choices and links to the AEC finder. Member names come from Wikipedia's list of members of the House of Representatives for 2025 to 2028, as at October 2026, and will go out of date after by-elections or changes, so check the name. The structure follows guides from the Climate Council, Citizens' Climate Lobby and the UK House of Commons Library.
Temperature line
NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP v4), global land-ocean annual mean (J-D), in degrees C above the 1951 to 1980 average. 2024 is the warmest year in the record at +1.29, then 2025 (+1.19) and 2023 (+1.17). It is drawn on its own scale, shown on the right of the chart.
News coverage line
MeCCO World Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change or Global Warming, 2004 to 2026 (Aoyagi and colleagues, University of Colorado Boulder, doi.org/10.25810/4c3b-b819). I summed the yearly totals across all regions and international wire services, and plotted the totals in thousands of stories a year (2021 peak: 103,377; 2025: 63,750). The totals reproduce MeCCO's published changes (down 38% from 2021 and 14% from 2024 in 2025, and tenth highest of 22 years). 2026 is left out because the dataset only runs to August.
Flow, not stock
Every square is emitted in a stated period (a night, a year, a flight). The red squares are annual emission rates allowed in 2035, not the CO2 already in the atmosphere. Warming follows the cumulative total, which is why the remaining 1.5 degree budget (about 170 Gt CO2 from 2026, Global Carbon Project) matters alongside the yearly rates.
Cruise ship
Up to 250 t of fuel a day at 85% load or above, times about 3.15, gives about 790 t. At 60 to 85% load, 120 to 135 t of fuel gives roughly 380 to 425 t.
Starship
About 2,700 t CO2 per launch (booster and ship) and about 425 t for a Falcon 9, as approximated by Space Ambition. SpaceX does not publish propellant masses. Some outlets quote far higher figures, which I could not reproduce from the propellant a rocket this size carries.
McDonald's
Total of about 60.5 million t CO2e in 2024, of which scope 1 is about 0.09 Mt, scope 2 (market-based) about 0.12 Mt and scope 3 about 60.2 Mt, from McDonald's Purpose & Impact Report 2024. I read the figures in a secondary report (Carbon Credits), not the company's own PDF. Scope 1 is what a company burns itself, scope 2 is the electricity it buys, and scope 3 is the rest of its value chain.
Eraring
Origin Energy reported Eraring's scope 1 emissions at 13.5 million t CO2e for the year to 30 June 2025 (Argus Media). Eraring is one of Australia's largest emitting power stations, alongside Bayswater. Scope 1 means the emissions released at the site itself.
Amazon
68.25 million t CO2e in 2024, up 6% on 2023, from Amazon's sustainability reporting as covered by GeekWire and Bloomberg.
Australia
About 27 million people out of about 8.2 billion is roughly 0.3% of the world's population, against about 1% of fossil CO2. 383 Mt of fossil CO2 in 2024. The government's inventory of all greenhouse gases including land use was about 459 Mt CO2e in 2025.
Sectors
Power generation, which covers electricity and heat, was 15.6 Gt CO2e in 2024, about 27% of all greenhouse gases, per UNEP's Emissions Gap Report 2025. Cement is about 1.6 Gt in 2023.
Producers
Carbon Majors 2024, Table 1, in million tonnes CO2e (so these squares are CO2e, not CO2 alone). Its totals differ slightly from the Global Carbon Project's.
Red squares
UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2025, medians for 2035: about 25 Gt CO2e for a path around 1.5 °C (range 20 to 27) and about 36 Gt for below 2 °C at 66% likelihood (range 31 to 39). For 2030 the medians are about 33 Gt (26 to 34) and 41 Gt (37 to 46). Totals include net land-use CO2.
World
Global Carbon Project 2025 projection: 38.1 Gt of fossil and cement CO2, with about 170 Gt of budget left for 1.5 °C. UNEP's all-gas total for 2024 is 57.7 Gt: fossil CO2 39.6, land-use CO2 4.4, methane 9.3, nitrous oxide 2.6, F-gases 1.7.

Sources