How we treat the climate impacts of methane matter a lot for carbon footprint of foods. But even if we exclude methane, meat and dairy products emit the most.

The Spanish flu pandemic had a devastating impact on the global population.

Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.

Plant-based protein sources still have a lower footprint than the lowest-impact meat products.

Transporting food by plane can come with a large carbon footprint. But very little of our food travels this way – just 0.16% of food miles are from air travel.

“Eat local” is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it's come from?

The media claims we are experiencing a ‘loneliness epidemic’. What is the evidence for this?

In countries such as Denmark and Switzerland, it is very common for people to live alone; but contrary to what many believe, this does not translate into higher loneliness. Loneliness and aloneness are not the same.

38 million people had HIV/AIDS in 2020. A couple of decades ago, the chances of surviving more than ten years with HIV were slim. Today, thanks to antiretroviral therapy (ART), people with HIV/AIDS can expect to live long lives. How many lives has ART saved?

Social connections matter for economic outcomes. Personal relations, even those that we maintain for non-economic reasons, often give us access to information and provide us with social collateral for economic transactions.

How many children die from pneumonia? How has this changed over time, and how can we prevent it?

More than three-quarters of global agricultural land is used for livestock, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world's protein and calories.

One-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food's emissions?

Feeding the world whilst reducing food's impact on the environment is one of our greatest challenges in the coming decades. What are food's environmental impacts?

The Lovie Award is the European internet award awarded by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Which countries are net importers and exports of emissions? How much CO2 is ‘offshored’?

There are large inequalities in the carbon footprint of people across the world. How do countries across the world compare? Where in the world do people emit the most CO2?

Which countries emit the most CO2 today? How do annual emissions vary across the world?

Our impact on climate change is not just about emissions that occur today. How much we emitted in the past also matters.

Our World in Data is home to thousands of charts. But some metrics are core to our work: here we present 12 that help us understand the state of the world.

An estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans each year. But the plastic we find in our surface waters is more than 100-fold lower. This is the 'missing plastic' problem.