Do Red or Blue States Emit More Carbon Dioxide?

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After reading a list of U.S. states ranked by carbon dioxide emissions I began to wonder if Red (politically conservative) states had higher or lower annual average emissions of carbon dioxide than Blue (politically liberal) states do. In this analysis, I included the state's:

annual CO² emissions
population
conservativeness (how conservative the state voted in the last 5 presidential elections)
total square miles
population density

To find the answer I compiled my data and imported it in to gretl.

What I found may shock you . . . but I doubt it.

Correlations

This answered the question:

There was no relevant correlation between conservativeness and carbon dioxide emissions.

I also discovered that:

The more populated a state is, the more carbon dioxide it emits every year.
Conservative people live in less-populated states.
Conservative people live in larger states.

Annual CO² Emission	Population	Conservativeness	Total Square Miles	Population Density
1.0000	0.8458	0.0106	0.1961	-0.1127	Annual CO² Emission
	1.0000	-0.2295	0.1242	-0.0816	Population
		1.0000	0.3543	-0.2019	Conservativeness
			1.0000	-0.1445	Total Square Miles
				1.0000	Population Density

But that didn't stop me.

Regression Analysis

Yup, I ran a regression and discovered nothing new.

Dependent variable: Annual_CO2_emis

                    coefficient     std. error    t-ratio    p-value 
  -------------------------------------------------------------------
  const            21379.0        13974.1          1.530    0.1332   
  Population           0.0152477      0.00139098  10.96     3.65e-014 ***
  Conservativism    1470.36         729.984        2.014    0.0501    *
  land__sq_mi_         1.02950        1.20993      0.8509   0.3994   
  total__sq_mi        -0.884168       1.05456     -0.8384   0.4063   
  population_dens      0.298782       4.97055      0.06011  0.9523   

Mean dependent var   119501.6   S.D. dependent var   116035.9
Sum squared resid    1.59e+11   S.E. of regression   60038.95
R-squared            0.759598   Adjusted R-squared   0.732280
F(5, 44)             27.80535   P-value(F)           1.37e-12
Log-likelihood      -617.8885   Akaike criterion     1247.777
Schwarz criterion    1259.249   Hannan-Quinn         1252.146

Excluding the constant, p-value was highest for variable 7 (population_dens)

Summary

If you are still reading this then write me and let me know why you have nothing better to do.

If you skipped here without reading the above, good for you. There was no relevant correlation between conservativeness and carbon dioxide emissions.

Comments (1)

|69.140.60.xxx |2010-02-23 16:36:53 wolske - so, what about the inverse?

what if you flip the conservative bit; is there evidence of a relevant correlation between progressives/liberals and carbon emissions?

liberals live in more populous states... liberals live in more densely populated states... the more populated a state the more CO2 it emits... seems like a logical conclusion.
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Correlations

Regression Analysis

Summary