Falling Pace of Carbon Dioxide Accumulation in Earth's Air Points to Shrinking Global Economy

The pace at which human carbon dioxide emissions are accumulating in the Earth’s air held steady in April 2025. The trailing 12-month average of the year-over-year change in atmospheric CO₂ concentration was 3.29 parts per million.

That’s a reduction of 0.28 parts per million, or about 7.9%, from the modern-era record of 3.57 parts per million recorded in December 2024. The change coincides with a sharp slowdown in China’s economic output following boosted production aimed at beating expanded tariffs and trade restrictions on the nation’s exports.

The slowdown is evident in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration data because China is, by a very wide margin, the world’s leading producer of carbon dioxide emissions. The following chart shows how this measure has changed from January 2000 through April 2025:

The slowdown is evident in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration data because China is the world’s leading producer of carbon dioxide emissions by a very wide margin.

The following tool gives an estimate of how much economic activity in worldwide (and predominantly in China) has declined since December 2024. If you’re accessing this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, you may nbeed to click through ot our site to access a working version.

The tool’s estimates are based on Jenny Cederborg’s and Sara Snöbohm’s 2016 paper. In their research, they investigated whether there is a relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions and identified a positive correlation between CO₂ emissions and GDP per capita. They found “CO₂ emissions increase by approximately 0.0002 [metric] tons (0.2 kg) per capita when GDP per capita increase by 1 dollar, holding all other variables constant”.

That relationship doesn’t take the effects of inflation into account, so the tool’s results based upon it are likely understating the reduction in global GDP associated with the reduction in CO₂ emissions.

That said, global GDP for 2024 is estimated to be around $110 trillion, which means the indicated global GDP reduction of $9.3 trillion since December 2024, or about 8.5%, is substantial.

And to underscore the point, this figure represents a low estimate for GDP loss through March-April 2025 because of the effects of inflation recorded since 2016, which includes the period of high inflation unleashed by the Biden-Harris administration in early 2021.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 May 2025.

Cederborg, Jenny and Snöbohm, Sara. Is there a relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions? Semantic Scholar. [PDF Document]. 2016.

Image credit: Stable Diffusion DreamStudio Beta. Prompt: “Digital art concept of carbon dioxide emissions being used to measure economic growth.”