Here in England we now drag the coal over on smoke spewing ships from Japan and Australia, rather than mine it here. The sum total of CO2 is higher than if we just mined it here. Net zero box ticking.

You don’t have any coal fired power stations and only a little coal used for other purposes compared to historical uses.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-by-end-user-uk

Your emissions are dropping fast

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-kingdom

It’s not box ticking it’s the complexity of change.

We only use coal for steel. It's tiny. Ships are very efficient and our mines leak more methane than Aus ones, so the emissions are actually lower.

That's because we let all the industries go offshore, for the promises of Neoliberalism. That should never have happened either.

Goal-shifting aside, and be that as it may for offshoring, but Neoliberalism was Thatcher, and she was popular in part because the trade unions were seen as too powerful, which in part was because of the then-recent history of the coal miners' union going on strike and forcing a three-day week for much of British industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

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> Here in England we now drag the coal over on smoke spewing ships from Japan and Australia, rather than mine it here

Australia I see but Japan? Japan is the world's third largest coal importer. I don't think they are sending much coal to England.

Indonesia would be the obvious replacement - Indonesia is a pacific island nation (the islandiest) which exports a ton of coal.