The conundrum of calculating carbon footprints

This chapter discusses CO₂ or carbon emissions and refers more broadly to green house gas (GHGs). People can then lobby politicians or political parties to promote ambitious environmental goals, or they can request lower carbon footprint of the goods they consume. Consumption based carbon footprints of products are calculated by adding the CO₂ emitted throughout the production chain, and including all scopes, while the consumption based carbon footprints of individuals are based on the total sum of all carbon footprints of all the products and services consumed by that individual. Buying emission permits thus allows someone to get rid of an excess of CO₂ by transferring it onto someone else's carbon footprint. However, in practice, people designing carbon footprint calculators face the challenge of deciding what to include in or exclude from the calculation and this must be kept in mind when discussing and using calculated carbon footprint.