The Chinese? They are one of the largest contributers to CO2 output, probably in part because they are manufacturing such solar solutions and batteries. Closely followed by India. What we do in our little country has little or no impact on global warming.
Well, there is some little problem with this occasional, on-demand, depiction of the UK as a tiny country or tiny hobbits. Ohh, why should we ever do anything, we count for nothing.
It is very true that, if you look at the amount of goods produce on UK soil, emissions are low. The UK turned into a services economy, that is what we export and 'make'. Even when we divide by the population, one person in the UK is linked on average to 5 tons emissions per year. That's lower than many other places.
The UK is 17th by total emissions, contributing around 1% of total world emissions FOR GOODS PRODUCED ON UK SOIL (sorry for the caps, but that is the main point really).
That list of major producers, which is topped by China, also sees India ranking pretty high. Not as high as a few countries you do not seem to consider, such Russia and the USA (2nd place and massive on per capita emissions).
Which leads to the simple question..
If the UK produces services mainly, does the population eat services too? Maybe the hobbits plane their wood with services?
Drive around at the wheel of good old English financial services?
Maybe not..
The blue bar is how much the UK produces in emissions on its own soil.
And the red is how much emission are produced to make the goods which we import to live as we do, and to make cash from services and our jobs. Which is more than double, so we should not hide that.
Because we cannot live our lives with the same quality without that.
So it is our emissions too. We are the not the bloody Shire.
If we were, you and I would probably be typing messages from the single computer available at our village library, having waited in line for other villagers to use it first.
The graph above is based on OES data, from an analysis dating back to 2018.
https://clcouncil.org/blog/emissions-from-imports-an-untapped-opportunity-for-decarbonization/
So, are the exports going up or down? Do we know produce less emissions, when it comes to what we import?
Accordingly to the UK government, they are going massively up.
Some going down, but cars imports, for instance, going up more than 10 times in 5 years, from China. Electric goods more than doubling.
This comes from
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nati...ents/articles/uktradeingoodsyearinreview/2023
If these goods were partially made here, it would cost more but also produce less emissions.
And here we are ignoring entirely energy imports (there is a reason for Russia to be one of the top emitters, and it is not about their internal economy, it is energy exports to us and other countries).
We are ignoring the huge amount of waste we ship abroad, producing emissions there which we do not account as our emissions.
And we are ignoring that our financial and technical services, which pay quite handsomely, producing tax revenues and income spent in the UK, are very much about companies abroad which produce lots of emissions.
In conclusion, it would be nice to think we live in our little islands, doing our little things, our tiny 1%.
But our lifestyle comes from much more than that. And denying that is ultimately a selfish choice which we are not going to get away with, not if our children matter at all. If we are only looking at our remaining life time, yes of course, 20 years maybe? Let the world burn.
But not everybody reasons like that. We might not even be here, if everybody did think like that in the past.
If it is all too overwheelming fair enough, it is stressful to read all the time about this stuff, and all the engativity.
But in Bob Dylan's words, we probably should not stay in the doorway, we should not block the halls.
Particularly on behalf of a few huge companies which are just planning to squeeze as much cash as possible from each year things are delayed. This is poisoning politics and the mind of people.
