Just by being…

There’s a lot of emissions ( about 1.7 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year per person) that we cannot directly affect. These come from public services such as the police, health, education and defence. Road building and construction also add to this total.

We can campaign to make our hospitals, police forces and schools “greener”.

We could challenge that emissions from defence are not covered by international agreements on reducing greenhouse gases.

While it is difficult to know how much defence emissions are, a study last year by the European Parliament estimated that the EU’s armed forces produced 24.8 Million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. This means that every citizen of the EU (and we in the UK are likely to have similar figures) has an annual emission of 55.5 Kg of CO2 equivalent just for defence.