Are You A Pollution Champion? Find Out!

Team: Nina Lutz / Nikita Waghani / Christian Feld

We worked with the World Bank dataset showing CO2 emissions on a country-by-country basis for the years 1990, 2000, 2007-2013. There are plenty of possibilities to analyze the data. If for example you look at the ranking of countries with the highest pollution over time, you see how China overtakes the US, because more and more industrial production is shifted there.

But is that a story that really engages people and sparks critical thinking? We wanted to give our audience the opportunity to explore what role their country plays. We wanted them to have a personalized experience.

Our interactive chart lets users pick one country and drag it to the left side of the screen. One option could also be that the site picks the user´s home country as default. The size of the circle indicates the annual CO2 emission. To compare, users can drag multiple countries to the right half creating a bubble chart. By doing so, the circle on the left side fills, until the added emissions on both sides match. To give the audience additional value, a bubble´s color indicates in which region of the world the country is located.  

This approach turns boring numbers into a story. By playing around with the circles, the audience can better understand what their country contributes to the problem of CO2 emissions and global warming. Through the colors showing regions the users might explore additional correlations. To compare the situation in an historical context, a slider lets users switch between years.

The chart is embedded in a website. Its little introductory article gives context and pulls readers into the story by using a narrative: “For people in the Maldives global warming is theory but an existential question. Their situation is influenced by all of us, around the globe. Find out what your countries impact is.”