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A country’s real contribution to the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere depends not just on the energy it uses, but also on the way it uses land and the stuff it consumes. The amount of land being farmed will affect emissions of methane and nitrous oxide as well as the amount of carbon dioxide held by the soil. (Forests help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.) Goods imported from overseas also have their own carbon footprint and use up natural resources.

To get a clear picture of a country’s overall footprint, then, we need to look at what it is consuming, including imports. The Global Footprint Network uses information on all of these areas to estimate each country’s total impact on the planet in terms of environmental cost, and has come up with a measure it calls global hectares. Using this measure, humanity’s global footprint is put at 13.9 billion global hectares. That’s 24 per cent more than the natural resources available on Earth. This is a problem: we are exceeding the planet’s ability to absorb our impact.

Global footprints (global hectares/person, 2003)