Study shows how the impact of imported goods has seen national footprint soarBy Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
For years successive governments have been proudly assuring us Scotland's climate-wrecking emissions have been going down. But it is not true: they have actually been going up.
A report to be published this week will give the lie to the comforting and widespread notion that, as a nation, we are doing our bit to help protect the planet from catastrophic climate change.
In fact, because of all the pollution caused by the increasing number of goods and materials imported from other countries, the emissions for which Scotland is responsible have been relentlessly rising.
The revelation poses major challenges for the Scottish government's climate change bill, currently on its way through parliament. Pollution from imports has historically been ignored by Scottish ministers.
The new report, from the respected Stockholm Environment Institute, estimates Scotland's real carbon footprint for the first time. Instead of just counting emissions from industrial plants, vehicle exhausts and buildings on Scottish territory, it adds in emissions from consumer goods bought from abroad.
The resulting figures reveal that the country's carbon emissions have actually increased by 11% to 85 million tonnes between 1995 and 2004. This contrasts with government claims that Scotland's territorial emissions have fallen by 13% to 57 million tonnes over the same period. The main explanation for the discrepancy is that the manufacture of goods and materials in Scotland has declined, while imports have rocketed. The pollution attributable to imports nearly tripled from 10.6 to 28 million tonnes between 1995 and 2004, according to the report.
It is wrong for Scotland to avoid responsibility for pollution from imported goods just because it happens in another country, argued the report's author, Dr John Barrett, who is based at the University of York. "Wherever a tonne of carbon is released it has the same impact," he said.
"There must be an absolute reduction in emissions, not the displacement of emissions to another country. It is essential that Scotland takes responsibility for the growing proportion of its emissions occurring abroad."
Barrett has submitted his report to Scottish ministers in the hope that they will use the data to reduce emissions from consumer imports. "If Scotland wants to make a real difference, it needs to account for carbon from a consumer perspective," he said.
The report points out that one of the main reasons for the decline in emissions in the early 1990s was the closure of the Ravenscraig steel works. Since then the consumption of steel in Scotland has increased, but the pollution has been exported to steel works in other countries.
Some 60% of the rise in Scotland's carbon footprint has been caused by transport, with other increases due to food, clothes, computers and mobile phones. "Transport is the area of biggest concern," the report states. "Unless a fundamental shift in the government's transport policies is undertaken that curbs the total distance we travel each year a substantial decarbonisation of households' activities appears difficult, if not impossible."
The report also points out that the carbon footprint of the richest households in Scotland can amount to 50 tonnes. This is three times higher than the 16-tonne footprint of the poorest households.
"It is hoped that this document does not provoke a defensive response but opens the minds, to the challenge ahead, of the politicians and civil servants who have the responsibility for climate change," the report concludes.
"The truth is out," declared Dr Richard Dixon, director of World Wildlife Fund Scotland. "This report leaves us in no doubt. Scotland's contribution to global emissions is actually increasing."
Dixon argued Scotland had only appeared to be cutting emissions because it was "off-shoring" them.
"It is essential that the Scottish climate change bill includes a requirement to measure our carbon footprint alongside the standard territorial emissions," he said.
On Friday the Scottish government repeated the claim that emissions had fallen by 13% since the early 1990s. Only counting the pollution directly generated in Scotland was in line with the international Kyoto Protocol for cutting climate pollution, the government added. "However, Scotland and the international community need to do much more, which is why the Scottish government has introduced the most ambitious climate change legislation anywhere in the world," said a government spokesman.
Green MSP Patrick Harvie, however, criticised ministers for claiming to have cut Scotland's emissions while blaming China for increasing theirs. "This is the climate equivalent of a big boy did it and ran away'," he said.
"If this country is to play a responsible role in global efforts to beat climate change, we must start by taking responsibility for all our decisions - instead of just outsourcing our carbon."
