The BBC today features a supposedly factual article in its Science & Environment section entitled “Climate change: how is my country doing on tackling it?”. It is dangerously misleading.

The article consists mainly of an interactive chart: the user types in the country of interest and up pops a graph showing the historical GHG emissions and future trends based on government pledges, current policies, and what’s needed to limit temperature rise to 1.5 deg C. The UK is one of the best performers, showing a historical trend nicely in line with what’s needed.

This is nonsense, and needs to be called out as such. It is disappointing that the BBC doesn’t allow comment on this article, presenting it as objective fact instead.

There are various aspects. Let’s start with history. The unstated implication of the analysis is that we’ve made good progress on decarbonisation since 1990. In the real world, emissions have come down mainly for two reasons. First, we closed a lot of industry and outsourced our emissions to other countries. Second, we switched from coal to gas-fired power stations in the 1990s and 2000s “dash for gas” – or rather, the competitive market did, because gas was cheap and CCGTs a profitable investment. Nothing to do with concern about global warming, despite the government’s desire to take credit. (Another factor has been the growth of renewable electricity, but while this is undoubtedly important going forward, its impact to 2021 on the GHG emissions trajectory has been less than the factors above. Renewables are discussed further at the bottom of this post.)

One could say that an unintended benefit is still a benefit – even if future schoolchildren are brainwashed about the world-beating efforts of UK governments between 1990 and 2023. But let’s consider what’s missing. Net imports, aviation and shipping. On a ‘carbon footprint’ basis, taking account of these missing items, a detailed analysis suggests the UK’s emissions were 774 MtCO2e in 2019, the last year calculated (source: Defra November 2022). Emissions take longer to calculate on this carbon footprint basis, in part because it is a low priority, which is a great pity. The standard figure for the same year 2019, as reported by the BBC, was 450 MtCO2e. So – the latest reported evidence suggests that on a carbon footprint basis, UK emissions are roughly 70% higher than the figures widely quoted by the government (unsurprisingly) and the BBC (disappointingly).

The standard figures suggest that we emit about 6.5 tCO2e per capita per annum. The more sensible carbon footprint basis suggests the figure is more like 11.2 tCO2e. The standard analysis suggests we’re greener than the Chinese on an average per capita basis. Carbon footprint analysis suggests the opposite.

This matters, because unless climate scientists are collectively wrong (a possibility, but not perhaps one we should rely on), our way of life is unsustainable as things stand. Technology might save us, or it might not. Until we have convincing evidence that it will, we should address our way of life in all its carbon-emitting aspects: material consumption, diet, heating, travel, electricity use.

We need to be honest about this, and treat climate change with the seriousness it deserves. A set of graphs that suggests we’re nicely on track – unlike other nations – does us all a national disservice.

(Note on renewables: the combined output from wind, solar, biomass and hydro is about one third of our electricity generation now in the UK. Growth in percentage terms has been broadly comparable with some other parts of the world such as the EU. This is great but is often overstated, partly due to the mix-up between electricity and total energy. Renewables now account for about a tenth of the UK’s energy usage. We don’t use renewables for our heating or our transport and then there are emissions associated with agriculture, steel, cement, … not to mention all the embodied emissions in our imported goods.)