Britons reach Africans’ annual carbon emissions in just two weeks

Research for Oxfam shows inequality between footprints of people in UK and in countries including Rwanda, Ethiopia and Malawi

The average British person will have emitted more carbon dioxide in the first two weeks of this year than a citizen of any one of seven African nations does in an entire year.

This is the key finding of an Oxfam project, published on Sunday, which discovered that someone in the UK will take just five days to emit the same carbon as someone in Rwanda does in a year.