ABSTRACT

The UK’s yearly national environmental accounts suggest an emissions figure ofabout 10 tonnes of greenhouse gases per person. This excludes internationalaviation and shipping. More importantly, it also excludes the footprint of the goods and services imported into the UK. An increasing fraction of the UK’s goods are made abroad, often in China, but also in Germany and other countries which specialize in manufacturing. Calculating the emissions that arise in other places in order to make things for the UK market is not a simple task and researchers have produced very different estimates. My rough approximation is that it accounts for about three tonnes per person, adding over a quarter to the UK’s real greenhouse gas output.1