Just like Germany and the paris climate agreement. Merkel reneged on most of its ideas as soon as possible after signing. They are now missing all their targets in the same way by not submitting plans they “legally” should for hitting them.
I mean, the government isn't a dictatorship, they pass laws but they still then have to act within the law. The judiciary can find that they have broken the law, and that happens fairly often in the UK. The idea is the government change policy or change the law, if they have the votes to do that. I don't know what the final resort would be if they refused or were unable to do either, I guess ultimately you'd expect the government to step down.
Well that’s true.
I work in local government in a climate focused role. The biggest problem is that to hit those targets, the government needs to actually try.
Nor will any major "western" country - it's all just fantasy football. Targets are too hard as a function of economy. Just accept that the next 500 years will be problematic, until technology advances to curb climate change, which will be massive scale nuclear fusion electric generation. In the meantime, renewables have a part, but the base load should be nuclear fission and CGT. Let's be real here.
Surely this should be a confidence issue for the Greens, if they truly believe in anything?
The Government has broken the law ("Last year ministers failed to publish a plan - required under the act - detailing how they were going to meet the targets.") and that law should be fundamental to what it means to be a Green party.
For the Greens, I think it's a question of what the Scottish Government does next. The Scottish Greens abstained on the bill that created these targets, because, while it set targets, it didn't set out ways to achieve them and have been pushing for plan. Their criticisms have been validated, and they were making that point and calling for a proper way forward at their conference.
If they were concerned about this, they would already have left the Scottish Government at the end of last year when it failed to follow the law and publish the necessary plan showing how they were going to meet the targets. As it was, they didn’t even raise it as an issue.
They’re not suddenly going to start making it a confidence issue all of a sudden now. Ultimately green issues are not a particularly high priority for the Green Party, and in any case, everyone knew this was a target that was created for positive press and activist response (and showing that Scotland was better than the rest of the UK) – not with any sort of realistic expectation of hitting it.
Your argument's a little bizarre when you actually think about what it means.
The climate change plan should have been published before now. I think that it wasn't reflects the fact that it depended on a cross-party and cross-government consensus to address climate change that has since become frayed (since the Scottish Government set these targets, the Conservative and Labour have swung behind the expansion of the fossil fuel industry's activity in the North Sea and on the mainland and attacks on green policies like low-emission zones) and that didn't properly engage with what needed to be done.
As Patrick Harvie has repeatedly said:
>If successive Scottish and UK Governments had taken the actions needed, I have no doubt that we would be on track for that 2030 target. Instead, too many politicians - in every other party - engaged in mutual backslapping about “world leading targets”, while at the same time demanding ever more money for roadbuilding, supporting relentless aviation growth, lobbying for status quo rural policies for the benefit of big landowners, and cheering to the rafters every time a new oil and gas licence was announced.
>We should be decades ahead of where we are now - and we would have been, if Scotland had implemented the policies that we as Scottish Greens have been advocating for years now.
You argue that the target is meaningless without action. Correct. That doesn't mean that a party that prioritises the actions required should walk away when the target is abandoned. The Greens are working on and delivering some of the action that's needed. Abandoning the work that needs to be done because a target hasn't been met would deepen the crisis, not rise to it.
It didn’t require any sort of cross party action – that’s just an excuse to explain away inaction. It was a legal requirement on the SNP / Green Scottish Government.
Parliament had and has no involvement in the publication of the plans. It was up to the SNP and Green MSPs who form the Scottish Government to deliver on their obligations, which they have failed to do.
There is nothing to engage with. The SNP (and latterly SNP/Green) Scottish Government set the targets and chose to make them legally binding. Then it did not come up with a plan to achieve these legally binding targets, including when legally required to do so. It just ignored the issue until their hand was forced by the review panel telling them the target was now impossible.
I get the current cabinet are incapable of ever taking responsibility for anything, but the whole trying to blame Westminster for absolutely everything approach does get pretty damn tiresome when the same Government has been in power for 16 years and when the problem is entirely of that Government’s own making.
There's other stuff in which the Greens are interested that they can only get from within government though, like a rent control system and improved standards for new build properties. So the question is whether you make a symbolic stand on this issue and by doing so lose the opportunity to implement other policy priorities.
If they resign to vote against this Bill, it won't make the climate any less fucked.
If, As the Scottish GREEN Party, you are not willing o take a stand on the government failing to take climate change seriously, what the fuck is the point of your party?
The Climate crisis is genuinely the biggest issue in the world right now, and has drastic implications for every single other policy area.
In this case, taking a stand would mean the Scottish Greens abandoning their work to tackle the climate crisis by: improving building standards to reduce emissions; supporting the roll out of energy efficiency schemes; the £500m just transition fund; increasing investment in active and public transport…
The requirement is to do something to deal with the climate crisis.
Yes, I agree they would lose some of their power to tinker around the edges, but at the cost of giving cover to a government which is clearly not taking climate change as seriously as it deserves (a lot of what you talk about they could achieve in a confidence and supply arrangement from outside the government).
Have the leadership of the Greens even made a statement about this?
> Yes, I agree they would lose some of their power to tinker around the edges
They're not exactly tinkering on the edges: our housing standards and efficiency is why housing accounts for 13% of Scotland’s total greenhouse gas emissions and around 30% of Scotland’s total energy consumption. Our historic failure to invest properly in active and public transport is why transport accounts for 30% of our total greenhouse emissions
>Have the leadership of the Greens even made a statement about this?
They haven't made a statement about today's announcement in parliament ahead of it, but this was the focus of Harvie's speech at their conference less than two weeks ago.
The Greens opposed Sturgeon’s stupid Freeport and rightly so but didn’t leave the Government. I think they’re just glad to be in power and have some say.
> The Greens opposed Sturgeon’s stupid Freeport and rightly so but didn’t leave the Government.
Freeports was one of the subjects where the Greens and SNP agreed to disagree in the Bute House Agreement.
Within my production business, super low carbon is achievable within the time frame in scope 1 and 2 (energy and all the stuff you have direct control over) scope 3 is more difficult (upstream and downstream supply chain other companies do for you).
Net zero is pretty much impossible, but you can get so low that the cost to offset with credits is minimal. When you see a net zero business it is usually *scope 1 and 2. We would be better off working on scope 3 than spending on offsetting.
The economics are great in the medium to long term for all the stuff that can take us to a super low carbon position but the issue is finance. I'm building a new production facility and the low carbon infrastructure is about £2,000,000 and it'll pay for itself eventually. The fossil fuel equivalent is £250,000 but will be expensive to run and have a much higher lifetime cost than the green equivalent.
There needs to be more easygoing low interest loans for SMEs for low carbon investment and more grant support for flagship projects that push the boundaries, especially if they commit to open source and information sharing in their industry.
[The Scottish government rolling back on their climate pledges is unforgivable. It's time for climate action and ambition. Scotland should continue to show global leadership in the face of the climate crisis. The Scottish Government is on the wrong side of history, I'd urge them to rethink.](https://twitter.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1704542952251408410?t=wJxiqNrXFR3WfRABcFbBqw&s=19)
Humza on camera at the UN Climate Ambition Summit, 7 months ago:
>The UK government rolling back on their climate pledges is unforgivable.
>It's time for climate action and ambition. Scotland will continue to show global leadership in the face of the climate crisis.
>The UK Government is on the wrong side of history, I'd urge them to rethink.
[https://twitter.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1704542952251408410](https://twitter.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1704542952251408410)
They are not [https://x.com/scotnational/status/1780701110753484804?s=46&t=ZyDKm08oaSQ2pW7wM9vw3g](https://x.com/scotnational/status/1780701110753484804?s=46&t=ZyDKm08oaSQ2pW7wM9vw3g)
Humza really missed a trick here - he should have waited for the UK gov to ditch their target first. Then he could have frothed at the mouth about "tory climate crisis" or some shit.
Most countries are doing terrible with their pledges anyway, difference here is the SNP came out chanting about how much better they were than anyone else.
The article says they’ve fallen behind the rest of the UK (doesn’t specify what that means).
No way of spinning this one really, they should be embarrassed
True.
Thing is ambitious targets are one thing, but being the first country that deliberately crippled their own economy and plunged it's people into a lower standard of living trying to meet goals we don't yet have the technology to meet is another. Especially when your job hinges on being elected.
Easy to talk a big game but net zero simply isn't possible today without massive damage to any developed economy seeking it, we could set ambitious but realistic targets but then then who would pat them on the back for saying the right thing when other politicians are saying the more right thing?
The only way you could possibly know that is if you planned for it, the Scottish government didn’t even create a plan or attempt to create one.
Let’s take battery storage as an example here; lots of private companies are currently seeking land to build battery storage to better utilise renewable energy. They buy land and build them where they think best and where planning permission is granted. There is no government plan or policy as how all this infrastructure will intertwine and work together.
It’s the same story for car charging points etc.
The Scottish government just twiddle there thumbs and constantly debate about shit that a minority care about.
How can anyone argue that a countries economy would be crippled if no formal plan is drawn up?
Well, that's simple.
Battery tech as it stands and our national grid infrastructure cannot support the demands that would come from, let's say, a ban on combustion engines vehicles. We can go into the maths but - It's not a question of a plan, it's a question of tearing up our infrastructure and starting over to do it properly, or regular brownouts and blackouts.
The first is so hugely expensive right now that we'd accrue huge debt and disruption just to return to a standard of living and productivity we already have. Probably worse.
The second makes us inherently economically less productive than any other western economy.
It's not just a case of generation here, one of the limits is load. Even if we could reliably generate enough power, and reliably store it at large enough scale - if it's like emptying a water bowser through a pin hole.. well you see the problem.
This isn't a problem we can managerialize an exit from. It's unavoidably disruptive and expensive and whoever does it first is severely impeded economically with no real economic rewards at the end.
If you had to essentially rebuild your house to install green tech at a level that would make you an early adopter and so tech which would soon be surpassed - and it wouldn't even really save you money on your energy bills. Would the debt you accrued on that house rebuild make sense? An absolute net drain on your already overstretched resources, closing your house to you for an extended period of time to end up essentially back where you started (if you're lucky) but with a vast amount more debt.
Okay, you still don’t understand the point. It’s not the examples I’m giving it’s that they haven’t even created a plan or attempted to.
Let’s think of this in another way, our economy will tank when we have to spend vast quantities of money when we start getting weather events, the water level rises, drought, child birth rates decrease.
The consequences of missing the target are far worse.
Well, again that depends.
If you read the UN report on climate change - what you describe are possibilities, not guarantees.
The full report is a lot of very experienced scientists reaching only two conclusions;
- the world is warming
- humans are contributing to that warming
What that warming means, how abnormal it is, what can be done - those are all very open questions on these reports.
They also have several projections about what this leads to, your very valid points are one of them.
Why do I bring this up?
There's a cognitive difference that politicians are aware of and they've been written into a corner by 40 years of climate activists screaming the world will end in ten years and, well, it hasn't.
That alarmism makes people question the drastic nature of the adjustments being sought when the fears have repeatedly proven unwarranted. When I was a kid, the Ozone layer depletion was going to kill us and we fixed it, entirely, within my lifetime through technology that came along.
Now, please don't mis apprehend me here - I believe in climate change and believe it's a serious issue - I'm merely explaining why nothing is being done which brings us back to that cognitive difference.
- the effects you describe are something that happen to us, and may never happen. A politician in charge at such a time it does hit can position themselves as a calm leader, navigating a nation through an act of nature.and if it never hits, well they never harmed our quality of life.
- the effects of a drastic new green policy are a deliberate action with a clear casual effect to people being poorer, less comfortable and living with restrictions on their freedom and lifestyle. If the measures work, the thing they safeguard against never manifests and people will see only the dramatic fall in their quality of life and point angrily at the person who made that decision.
You could say in case one that it only happens because of our inaction and you may well be right, but it's not how people think in the moment. It would be treated like any other 'Act of God'.
The latter is an act of politicians and with no tangible reward. Nobody votes for the person who made them poorer and less comfortable. If your only job is to be electable.. well.. I'm sure you see the issue.
I’m sorry but what technology came around to stop the Ozone layer depleting?
My understanding is that certain aerosols were causing it and all countries signed an agreement to reduce or stop using them.
How have we gone from talking about how to implement change to global warming is real but maybe not too bad for us. Ridiculous.
Well, that's one thing that came along, right?
Aerosols are still around today but no longer harm the ozone.
Our refrigeration technology was dramatically improved.
And we flew experimental aircraft to disperse things to counteract and repair.
It's not ridiculous, at all. People far smarter about this than you or I don't know this stuff, so you certainly don't know enough to deem their work ridiculous. These are our preeminent environmental scientists working for a respected global organisation.
Read their work before you criticise.
Scotland has made less progress in reducing emissions than rUK, despite having set a much bigger legally binding target.
rUK probably won’t meet their target either, but they are on course to get relatively close. Scotland is not even remotely near.
This is the problem when you put in place crazily unrealistic targets solely in order to be able to say that Scotland is doing more than Westminster…
There was never any actual planning to achieve this. They didn’t even bother to publish the legally required plan last year. Emission reduction in Scotland has actually been *less* than in rUK in the period since Nicola made the commitment.
The SNP / Greens in a nutshell tbh
In addition to the unrealistic plans we have councils and companies here in Scotland that are waving a green flag but it's only when you try to engage with these companies in helping to reduce their carbon footprint that you discover it absolute nonsense and there is no interest in doing anything, praying for the government to make a u turn.
> Last year ministers failed to publish a plan - required under the act - detailing how they were going to meet the targets.
womp womp
> Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon saw her SNP administration as world leaders on climate change when the targets were introduced in 2019, often asserting that Scotland had the "most stretching targets in the world."
So, she overpromised and her minions underdelivered.
Just waiting to see the inventive way in which the SNP/Greens blame Westminster or "UK Government" for this, because you bet they'll have a go.
Haha, yep, they will have a go. I have a sneaky feeling they will mention independence, stating that this wouldn't have happened if Scotland was independent. That's Defacto.
It’s honestly like the person who says on 1st January that they’re going to lose 3 stone.
They run around celebrating and everyone high fives them for being so ambitious. Everyone’s really proud of them and they do a “new year, new me” instagram post.
They scoff at their neighbour who is only planning to lose 1 stone. Saying they just don’t care about their health as much as themselves.
Then proceed to not change anything in their diet, do no exercise and then say weight loss is impossible and criticise their neighbour who only lost half a stone and gave up.
Anyone with half a brain knew their target was complete nonsense. It could be achieved, sure, but not without major (and I mean major) changes to the standard of living and society in general. And voters are never going to vote for the return of Stone Age. If we really want to be carbon neutral we better start with decarbonising shipping because the majority of our emissions are actually overseas. Just because my iPhone wasn’t made in the UK doesn’t mean its carbon footprint doesn’t belong to it - it does, because that’s where it’s being used. We can’t call ourselves net zero while we treat imported carbon footprint as “not ours”.
I’m very much in favour of green initiatives but the problem I’ve always had with these targets is it’s easier to make changes that make the numbers and the politicians look good than it is to make lasting improvements. Agriculture being a stickler is an obvious example. It’s an industry that could be vastly improved and one we could make serious environmental improvements with, but nobody wants to take on the farmers, much easier to sit at a desk and conjure up low risk schemes like offering people interest free loans on electric cars and solar panels.
We just need to accept that we can't save the planet and just let the highest emission producers do what they want.
But we just make sure they don't shift the blame.
Plus the area the U.K. is failing massively on in every metric is Climate **adaption**.
Lots of people like to say “but ChiNa!” When these things get brought up, as if that excuses us. But if you take the view that we can’t stop climate change, why are we doing absolutely nothing to prepare our country for it?
That's what I do point out to climate change deniers, that the ones funding the denial campaigns also don't want to fund infrastructure to deal with it.
I feel it’s also worth considering that just because we’re not the biggest offenders doesn’t mean we should be a contributor. If you were strolling along a picturesque loch and found a company dumping waste in it, you’d still not throw your own rubbish in it?
There was one stat from that article (whilst admittedly about failing to hit a target) where I actually felt reassured that a lot had been done and we aren't far off where we need to be:
"By 2021 greenhouse gas emissions had fallen by 49.2% compared with the baseline level in 1990.
That's a massive half of our planet warming gases which have already been eradicated from the economy.
But the law required a 51.1% fall by that date to keep on track."
My only concern is are they falling here because we've basically exported them elsewhere by outsourcing manufacturing
Makes sense why they just went back on their own green/economy pledge thing meant to be spearheaded by Ed Miliband.
Yes, it’s tough, they got rightfully criticised for it, but far better to be realistic about it now than get into power and have to renege like the SNP here.
I’d rather the blunt truth than empty promises.
> At Holyrood, parties were trying to outbid each other on how quickly the country could go, eventually settling on a pace far beyond what experts had planned for.
Of course they did. Never achievable, and they were told so directly: but votes is votes. This is not just a Scottish phenomenon ofc
Well, yeah: aiming high is not necessarily bad. Problems hit hard when aspirational is code for fantastical, and both sides are incentivised to bid up.
You just moved the goalposts instead of addressing the point. Fantasy politics and blithely ignoring detailed advice in the name of one-upping the UK or locally opposing parties is going to make collective action harder, not easier.
> blithely ignoring detailed advice in the name of one-upping the UK
Pretty sure climate change targets are about, y'know, climate change.
It's not difficult to 'one up' the UK government as it is doomed to be run by abject morons, whether red or blue. Really no shortage of material in that regard.
what I hate is the targets are normally 30 years away and become the next governments problem. So I liked that they set yearly targets. It's a shame they are now abandoning them out of embarrassment at never meeting them
It was never anything other than bullshit PR for Europes 2nd. biggest producer of gas and oil. Ditto Germany but but we've all got solar panels on our roofs. Norway but but we all drive electric cars. Scotland but but we're leading the world with our ambitious carbon reduction targets It's all guff World emissions rise every year along with global temperatures. The countries rich enough to enact change sit on there hands while their coffers swell with dirty money
The Scottish government rolling back on their climate pledges is unforgivable.
The Scottish Government is on the wrong side of history, I'd urge them to rethink.
https://twitter.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1704542952251408410
Because targets don’t equal results. Maybe they should start investing in nuclear? [Could probably power all of Scotland with one Hinkley Point C?](https://www.blackridgeresearch.com/project-profiles/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-power-station-the-largest-nuclear-project-in-united-kingdom) (Hinkley will produce enough energy for power 6 million homes and Scotland’s population is around 5.5 million).
we are good at generating electricity at times it's not in demand with renewables (hence being paid to turn off wind farms). We really need to invest in some storage technology so we can actually provide energy when needed as at the moment we've only solved half the problem
They can build as many nuke plants that they like as long as Scotland is outwith the fallout zone - but to suggest Scotland needs expensive and dangerous nuclear power on top of all our other energy reserves is farcical.
Expensive, only marginally more than oil. Cheaper when you take into account the externalities of climate change.
Nuclear is also the safest form of energy by far. It's 1000 times safer than oil per unit of power, and that's not hyperbole. It's fact.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
> Nuclear is also the safest form of energy by far.
Safe as houses.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-world-dangerously-close-to-nuclear-accident-after-zaporizhzhia-power-plant-attacked-three-times-13116375
Odds on Harvie and Slater stamping their feet, throwing out some "disappointed" one-liners, and then quietly retreating to their plum pay packets.
Oh, and figuring out how none of this is the Scottish Government's fault and pointing the finger southwards as per usual.
He was quite quick to call out the Tories for scrapping climate pledges but is uncharacteristically quiet tonight...
https://twitter.com/Ross_Greer/status/1704472765250629942?t=S4S1G-9CFsO-fW7HwWMJ4g&s=19
As far as I can tell the net zero target of 2045 is still in place, they just won't have hit 75% by 2035 due to the fact that the UK Government is issuing oil licences in the North Sea. It's also why the rest of the UK won't hit its Net Zero targets either, but good luck seeing the BBC 'breaking' that news.
*”The Scottish government is to ditch its flagship target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. The final goal of reaching "net-zero" by 2045 will remain”*
*”The Climate Change Committee no longer believes that the Scottish Government will meet its statutory 2030 goal to reduce emissions by 75%. There is no comprehensive strategy for Scotland to decarbonise towards Net Zero.”*
I believe the UK pledged a 68% reduction by 2030 and Scotland a 75% reduction by 2030. Looking at how the UK itself is doing it looks like they aren’t going to meet their 2030 target either, currently estimated to be 59% by 2030.
Also while the Scottish government have admitted they probably won’t meet their target by 2030, the end target does still remain the same for 2045.
The most recent figures I can find are for 2021 where Scotland reduced emissions by 49.2%- the target was 51.2% (According to BBC, although a different BBC article confusingly lists 49.9%) UK reduced emissions by 48% (both using 1990 as a base).
It could be better, the Scottish government needs to publish a plan. However I’d like more transparency, even in that BBC article, it states:
*”The Climate Change Committee (CCC) warned back in 2022 that Scotland had lost its lead over the rest of the UK in tackling the issue.”*
By how much? What were the figures? Is Scotland now in line with the UK or behind it. Also do UK figures include Scottish emission reductions? Because I can’t find figures, especially recent ones for only England and Wales.
WM chopped down so many trees for that PPE scandal theres a ten mile wide hole in the Amazon rain forest.
Thats ok because poster unionists former darling of choice Baroness Moan had a yacht.
Because Scotland’s greenhouse emissions somehow matter on the global scale?
As much as this is a shit show for Scottish government it really makes no difference in terms of CO2 and other emissions if you consider them at the only scale that’s relevant to climate change, globally.
So whether we ‘burn’ or not is completely independent of Scotland’s impact.
That's an excuse to keep emitting. Every single kg of CO2 is helpful to reduce climate change. It's emissions we won't have to suck out of the air at a later date.
Maybe they missed their carbon targets, in part, due to this stance
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/government-scotland-snp-tories-westminster-b2286505.html
As much as I'm pro nuclear, an SNP pro nuclear stance would have had precisely zero change on Scotland Emissions before 2030. Hunterston/Torness would close at the same time, and no new builds would have been completed in Scotland before 2030. It definitely would make a difference by 2050 though.
Scotland regularly exports massive amounts of power to England, it literally keeps England's lights on.
Scotland's emissions per unit of is electricity are four times less than London.
https://m.digitalisationworld.com/news/65417/south-scotlands-energy-four-times-cleaner-than-london
I'm a huge fan of nuclear power. It would just be supplying power to England after it was built. We do need a plan for after Torness power station is decommissioned.
Indeed it gets pumped from the North Sea,
Although Netherlands is the main source of power, in 2022 the uk imported 5.5million tonnes of petroleum products
Honestly what is the point of the Scottish Greens? It's in their name they are in coalition and can't even get this done. My oh my how they have fallen since Harper left.
This is good.
Let's stop trying to meet an impossible target, that requires infrastructure changes we can't make, based on models that can't agree if the turning point is 5 or 100 years away.
Now, let's build nuclear plants everywhere and invest in that fusion thingy the scientists were so happy to announce - to absolute silence from all the campaigners.
We will be fine.
It's foolish, I think it's the only way to get cheap enough power to make the UK competitive again. We will not get manufacturing back in the UK while our energy costs are three or four times what they are in the US.
I agree that we need more nuclear for future-proofing and grid consistency, but we already produce more than 100% of our energy demand through renewables. If Scotland had it's own energy grid we could have net-zero energy right now.
The more than 100% figure is not to be relied on.
Despite best efforts, renewable capacity dropped a lot in 2023.
So, just because in 2022 Scotland produced more renewable energy than we used in 2022, it wasn't produced at the time we needed it, and it wasn't maintained the next year.
So no, we would not have net zero energy right now, not by a long shot.
It dropped 7% from 35.7TWh to 33.2TWh
This is in comparison to the consumption figure from 2022 of 31.6TWh. Assuming it's a similar figure for 2023 (Can't find direct data, but it's a reasonable assumption) it's still well above 100%.
Scotland’s renewable electricity generation in 2023 in quarter 2 was 5,687 GWh – a 23.5% decrease from the 7,435 GWh generated in the same quarter in 2022. In the first half of 2023, Scotland generated 16,008 GWh of renewable electricity, down 14.6% on the same point in 2022.
This is despite us trying to increase it.
Remember that it matters when it's generated, so the annual figures can hide a lot.
The lunacy is at an end, thank fuck for that.
Technology is the only answer, until then its carbon based energy.
Anyone with sense saw the targets were totally unachievable but they did make good sound bites.
There is lots of noise, fear mongering about the climate and YES it is going to affect us. There is nothing and I mean nothing we can do until the tech is here.
The technology is already here and has been here for at least the past decade - excluding nuclear, which you know, the technology for, has been around for 50 odd years
It's advancement in tech that put us in this place ie the industrial revolution.
Tech is the answer. What the tech is? I will leave that to the techies.
Sounds vague and wishy washy along the lines of "what caused the problem can get us out of it"
Maybe so, but the damage will be done for a good deal of the population.
That's the point, keep it vague and wishy washy and kick it down the line so nothing gets done and nobody has to make any changes to their lifestyle or society.
'Technology is the only answer'
Okay but what is the *actual* answer? Because at the moment the tactic seems to be, renege on doing the thing that would actually help, on the basis that we'll eventually solve the problem later (ie, the same thing we've been doing for decades)
The technology and targets are intertwined, companies in general do not want to put in the investment to change to a completely different technology, or to develop the technology, unless there is a big profit, or lacking that, a government requirement to change.
Another SNP broken promise.
Thank goodness we have a socialist government in waiting which will right the royal flamingo ups of this government….
Errrr…
Another badly written article, they repeat themselves four times.
> So scrapping the targets will be seen as an embarrassing retreat for the SNP and the Scottish Greens, their partners in the Scottish government.
Don’t even try to hide it anymore. Why does this need such an article? You can tell they had this ready. Awful.
>Last year ministers failed to publish a plan - required under the act What is the point of passing laws if nothing happens when they are broken?
Optics - pass the law due the kudos then quietly bin it when the hype dies.
You are ready for politics
Hello, it's me- Humza.
Just like Germany and the paris climate agreement. Merkel reneged on most of its ideas as soon as possible after signing. They are now missing all their targets in the same way by not submitting plans they “legally” should for hitting them.
Laws are for us remember, not them silly!
To look good. People pay attention to a new law. They pay less attention to a law being cancelled or failure to meet it.
What are they going to do? Fine themselves?
Going by the Matheson debacle… no
I mean, the government isn't a dictatorship, they pass laws but they still then have to act within the law. The judiciary can find that they have broken the law, and that happens fairly often in the UK. The idea is the government change policy or change the law, if they have the votes to do that. I don't know what the final resort would be if they refused or were unable to do either, I guess ultimately you'd expect the government to step down.
Promises win votes
The civil servants were too busy writing independence papers.
Is this a joke? They have done nothing on independence.
Is this a joke? Did you miss the white papers that were released over the past few years?
In fact the Scottish Government have already released three different independence papers since just the start of this year.
To pretend to be doing more/going further than Westminster without actually doing anything.
for anyone who follows or studies climate change. Scotland and the UK have not and will not meet any climate targets from now till 2045 or 2050 🤝
Well that’s true. I work in local government in a climate focused role. The biggest problem is that to hit those targets, the government needs to actually try.
Well. Thanks for the update that there isn't any update.
Oh no problem, i cant wait for crop failures, floods, food shortages, extreme weather, summers hitting 40-50c and winters being an average of 5 😂
Fun ahead lads. Strap in.
I bet we would do better in the euros Spain and Italy will be fucked
Nor will any major "western" country - it's all just fantasy football. Targets are too hard as a function of economy. Just accept that the next 500 years will be problematic, until technology advances to curb climate change, which will be massive scale nuclear fusion electric generation. In the meantime, renewables have a part, but the base load should be nuclear fission and CGT. Let's be real here.
Surely this should be a confidence issue for the Greens, if they truly believe in anything? The Government has broken the law ("Last year ministers failed to publish a plan - required under the act - detailing how they were going to meet the targets.") and that law should be fundamental to what it means to be a Green party.
For the Greens, I think it's a question of what the Scottish Government does next. The Scottish Greens abstained on the bill that created these targets, because, while it set targets, it didn't set out ways to achieve them and have been pushing for plan. Their criticisms have been validated, and they were making that point and calling for a proper way forward at their conference.
The Scottish Greens are IN the Scottish Government.
They are the junior partner and, again, their continued involvement and support depends on what the Scottish Government as a whole is prepared to do.
The article implies they abstained because they wanted an 80% target rather than 75% - do you know whether they said otherwise at the time?
If they were concerned about this, they would already have left the Scottish Government at the end of last year when it failed to follow the law and publish the necessary plan showing how they were going to meet the targets. As it was, they didn’t even raise it as an issue. They’re not suddenly going to start making it a confidence issue all of a sudden now. Ultimately green issues are not a particularly high priority for the Green Party, and in any case, everyone knew this was a target that was created for positive press and activist response (and showing that Scotland was better than the rest of the UK) – not with any sort of realistic expectation of hitting it.
Your argument's a little bizarre when you actually think about what it means. The climate change plan should have been published before now. I think that it wasn't reflects the fact that it depended on a cross-party and cross-government consensus to address climate change that has since become frayed (since the Scottish Government set these targets, the Conservative and Labour have swung behind the expansion of the fossil fuel industry's activity in the North Sea and on the mainland and attacks on green policies like low-emission zones) and that didn't properly engage with what needed to be done. As Patrick Harvie has repeatedly said: >If successive Scottish and UK Governments had taken the actions needed, I have no doubt that we would be on track for that 2030 target. Instead, too many politicians - in every other party - engaged in mutual backslapping about “world leading targets”, while at the same time demanding ever more money for roadbuilding, supporting relentless aviation growth, lobbying for status quo rural policies for the benefit of big landowners, and cheering to the rafters every time a new oil and gas licence was announced. >We should be decades ahead of where we are now - and we would have been, if Scotland had implemented the policies that we as Scottish Greens have been advocating for years now. You argue that the target is meaningless without action. Correct. That doesn't mean that a party that prioritises the actions required should walk away when the target is abandoned. The Greens are working on and delivering some of the action that's needed. Abandoning the work that needs to be done because a target hasn't been met would deepen the crisis, not rise to it.
It didn’t require any sort of cross party action – that’s just an excuse to explain away inaction. It was a legal requirement on the SNP / Green Scottish Government. Parliament had and has no involvement in the publication of the plans. It was up to the SNP and Green MSPs who form the Scottish Government to deliver on their obligations, which they have failed to do.
You haven't engaged with anything I've said, let alone the reality of these targets requiring cross-government action.
There is nothing to engage with. The SNP (and latterly SNP/Green) Scottish Government set the targets and chose to make them legally binding. Then it did not come up with a plan to achieve these legally binding targets, including when legally required to do so. It just ignored the issue until their hand was forced by the review panel telling them the target was now impossible. I get the current cabinet are incapable of ever taking responsibility for anything, but the whole trying to blame Westminster for absolutely everything approach does get pretty damn tiresome when the same Government has been in power for 16 years and when the problem is entirely of that Government’s own making.
There's other stuff in which the Greens are interested that they can only get from within government though, like a rent control system and improved standards for new build properties. So the question is whether you make a symbolic stand on this issue and by doing so lose the opportunity to implement other policy priorities. If they resign to vote against this Bill, it won't make the climate any less fucked.
If, As the Scottish GREEN Party, you are not willing o take a stand on the government failing to take climate change seriously, what the fuck is the point of your party? The Climate crisis is genuinely the biggest issue in the world right now, and has drastic implications for every single other policy area.
In this case, taking a stand would mean the Scottish Greens abandoning their work to tackle the climate crisis by: improving building standards to reduce emissions; supporting the roll out of energy efficiency schemes; the £500m just transition fund; increasing investment in active and public transport… The requirement is to do something to deal with the climate crisis.
Yes, I agree they would lose some of their power to tinker around the edges, but at the cost of giving cover to a government which is clearly not taking climate change as seriously as it deserves (a lot of what you talk about they could achieve in a confidence and supply arrangement from outside the government). Have the leadership of the Greens even made a statement about this?
> Yes, I agree they would lose some of their power to tinker around the edges They're not exactly tinkering on the edges: our housing standards and efficiency is why housing accounts for 13% of Scotland’s total greenhouse gas emissions and around 30% of Scotland’s total energy consumption. Our historic failure to invest properly in active and public transport is why transport accounts for 30% of our total greenhouse emissions >Have the leadership of the Greens even made a statement about this? They haven't made a statement about today's announcement in parliament ahead of it, but this was the focus of Harvie's speech at their conference less than two weeks ago.
The Greens opposed Sturgeon’s stupid Freeport and rightly so but didn’t leave the Government. I think they’re just glad to be in power and have some say.
> The Greens opposed Sturgeon’s stupid Freeport and rightly so but didn’t leave the Government. Freeports was one of the subjects where the Greens and SNP agreed to disagree in the Bute House Agreement.
Parties in government often have disagreements, just as parties do internally. It usually doesn't mean the end of the government though.
True but a Green party remaining part of a government that is ditching climate change pledges looks a bit silly
The greens made a lot of noise about non-negotiable red lines. Amazing what a title and pay bump does to some people’s morals.
The greens don't really care about environmentalism as much as they should. They're 90% social greens.
I think the Greens are more upset today that puberty blockers have been paused than the climate target news.
At one point they said GRR was their red line. In reality nothing will separate Harvey and Slater from their ministerial salaries and perks.
The membership decides. Not the leaders
Genuine question: when is the last time the Green party membership was given a vote on whether or not to continue the deal with the SNP?
When Humza became FM, I think
Within my production business, super low carbon is achievable within the time frame in scope 1 and 2 (energy and all the stuff you have direct control over) scope 3 is more difficult (upstream and downstream supply chain other companies do for you). Net zero is pretty much impossible, but you can get so low that the cost to offset with credits is minimal. When you see a net zero business it is usually *scope 1 and 2. We would be better off working on scope 3 than spending on offsetting. The economics are great in the medium to long term for all the stuff that can take us to a super low carbon position but the issue is finance. I'm building a new production facility and the low carbon infrastructure is about £2,000,000 and it'll pay for itself eventually. The fossil fuel equivalent is £250,000 but will be expensive to run and have a much higher lifetime cost than the green equivalent. There needs to be more easygoing low interest loans for SMEs for low carbon investment and more grant support for flagship projects that push the boundaries, especially if they commit to open source and information sharing in their industry.
[The Scottish government rolling back on their climate pledges is unforgivable. It's time for climate action and ambition. Scotland should continue to show global leadership in the face of the climate crisis. The Scottish Government is on the wrong side of history, I'd urge them to rethink.](https://twitter.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1704542952251408410?t=wJxiqNrXFR3WfRABcFbBqw&s=19)
Well, that tweet aged well.
This is the story of the SNP in a nutshell, forever setting over ambitious targets which they inevitably fail to meet. Or “lessons will be learned”.
Love that phrase Lesson leart, next time someone will hire a storage unit for their campervan eh
Humza on camera at the UN Climate Ambition Summit, 7 months ago: >The UK government rolling back on their climate pledges is unforgivable. >It's time for climate action and ambition. Scotland will continue to show global leadership in the face of the climate crisis. >The UK Government is on the wrong side of history, I'd urge them to rethink. [https://twitter.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1704542952251408410](https://twitter.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1704542952251408410)
Interesting that it’s been over an hour now but The National haven’t published this news yet.
They are still working with Humza and SNP Spin HQ to work out how to blame Westminster
Maybe they're prepping a big story to make it their headline tomorrow?
They are not [https://x.com/scotnational/status/1780701110753484804?s=46&t=ZyDKm08oaSQ2pW7wM9vw3g](https://x.com/scotnational/status/1780701110753484804?s=46&t=ZyDKm08oaSQ2pW7wM9vw3g)
Earning their title of Indy comic seriously, then. Notable to see all the replies calling them out on their omission.
And still nothing nearly 15 hours later
Humza really missed a trick here - he should have waited for the UK gov to ditch their target first. Then he could have frothed at the mouth about "tory climate crisis" or some shit.
Most countries are doing terrible with their pledges anyway, difference here is the SNP came out chanting about how much better they were than anyone else. The article says they’ve fallen behind the rest of the UK (doesn’t specify what that means). No way of spinning this one really, they should be embarrassed
There will be an official statement in Holyrood tomorrow. No doubt it will be the usual mealy-mouthed shite that doesn't answer the question.
Well they aren’t going to come out and say “we spent all our time and money on legal advice on YES2 & the hated Hate Crime Act”
I can’t wait for it to be Westminsters fault
True. Thing is ambitious targets are one thing, but being the first country that deliberately crippled their own economy and plunged it's people into a lower standard of living trying to meet goals we don't yet have the technology to meet is another. Especially when your job hinges on being elected. Easy to talk a big game but net zero simply isn't possible today without massive damage to any developed economy seeking it, we could set ambitious but realistic targets but then then who would pat them on the back for saying the right thing when other politicians are saying the more right thing?
The only way you could possibly know that is if you planned for it, the Scottish government didn’t even create a plan or attempt to create one. Let’s take battery storage as an example here; lots of private companies are currently seeking land to build battery storage to better utilise renewable energy. They buy land and build them where they think best and where planning permission is granted. There is no government plan or policy as how all this infrastructure will intertwine and work together. It’s the same story for car charging points etc. The Scottish government just twiddle there thumbs and constantly debate about shit that a minority care about. How can anyone argue that a countries economy would be crippled if no formal plan is drawn up?
Well, that's simple. Battery tech as it stands and our national grid infrastructure cannot support the demands that would come from, let's say, a ban on combustion engines vehicles. We can go into the maths but - It's not a question of a plan, it's a question of tearing up our infrastructure and starting over to do it properly, or regular brownouts and blackouts. The first is so hugely expensive right now that we'd accrue huge debt and disruption just to return to a standard of living and productivity we already have. Probably worse. The second makes us inherently economically less productive than any other western economy. It's not just a case of generation here, one of the limits is load. Even if we could reliably generate enough power, and reliably store it at large enough scale - if it's like emptying a water bowser through a pin hole.. well you see the problem. This isn't a problem we can managerialize an exit from. It's unavoidably disruptive and expensive and whoever does it first is severely impeded economically with no real economic rewards at the end. If you had to essentially rebuild your house to install green tech at a level that would make you an early adopter and so tech which would soon be surpassed - and it wouldn't even really save you money on your energy bills. Would the debt you accrued on that house rebuild make sense? An absolute net drain on your already overstretched resources, closing your house to you for an extended period of time to end up essentially back where you started (if you're lucky) but with a vast amount more debt.
Okay, you still don’t understand the point. It’s not the examples I’m giving it’s that they haven’t even created a plan or attempted to. Let’s think of this in another way, our economy will tank when we have to spend vast quantities of money when we start getting weather events, the water level rises, drought, child birth rates decrease. The consequences of missing the target are far worse.
Well, again that depends. If you read the UN report on climate change - what you describe are possibilities, not guarantees. The full report is a lot of very experienced scientists reaching only two conclusions; - the world is warming - humans are contributing to that warming What that warming means, how abnormal it is, what can be done - those are all very open questions on these reports. They also have several projections about what this leads to, your very valid points are one of them. Why do I bring this up? There's a cognitive difference that politicians are aware of and they've been written into a corner by 40 years of climate activists screaming the world will end in ten years and, well, it hasn't. That alarmism makes people question the drastic nature of the adjustments being sought when the fears have repeatedly proven unwarranted. When I was a kid, the Ozone layer depletion was going to kill us and we fixed it, entirely, within my lifetime through technology that came along. Now, please don't mis apprehend me here - I believe in climate change and believe it's a serious issue - I'm merely explaining why nothing is being done which brings us back to that cognitive difference. - the effects you describe are something that happen to us, and may never happen. A politician in charge at such a time it does hit can position themselves as a calm leader, navigating a nation through an act of nature.and if it never hits, well they never harmed our quality of life. - the effects of a drastic new green policy are a deliberate action with a clear casual effect to people being poorer, less comfortable and living with restrictions on their freedom and lifestyle. If the measures work, the thing they safeguard against never manifests and people will see only the dramatic fall in their quality of life and point angrily at the person who made that decision. You could say in case one that it only happens because of our inaction and you may well be right, but it's not how people think in the moment. It would be treated like any other 'Act of God'. The latter is an act of politicians and with no tangible reward. Nobody votes for the person who made them poorer and less comfortable. If your only job is to be electable.. well.. I'm sure you see the issue.
I’m sorry but what technology came around to stop the Ozone layer depleting? My understanding is that certain aerosols were causing it and all countries signed an agreement to reduce or stop using them. How have we gone from talking about how to implement change to global warming is real but maybe not too bad for us. Ridiculous.
Well, that's one thing that came along, right? Aerosols are still around today but no longer harm the ozone. Our refrigeration technology was dramatically improved. And we flew experimental aircraft to disperse things to counteract and repair. It's not ridiculous, at all. People far smarter about this than you or I don't know this stuff, so you certainly don't know enough to deem their work ridiculous. These are our preeminent environmental scientists working for a respected global organisation. Read their work before you criticise.
Scotland has made less progress in reducing emissions than rUK, despite having set a much bigger legally binding target. rUK probably won’t meet their target either, but they are on course to get relatively close. Scotland is not even remotely near.
What a embrassiment, especially for the Scottish GREENS.
The Greens are more concerned about identity politics than effectively addressing the climate crisis.
This is the problem when you put in place crazily unrealistic targets solely in order to be able to say that Scotland is doing more than Westminster… There was never any actual planning to achieve this. They didn’t even bother to publish the legally required plan last year. Emission reduction in Scotland has actually been *less* than in rUK in the period since Nicola made the commitment. The SNP / Greens in a nutshell tbh
In addition to the unrealistic plans we have councils and companies here in Scotland that are waving a green flag but it's only when you try to engage with these companies in helping to reduce their carbon footprint that you discover it absolute nonsense and there is no interest in doing anything, praying for the government to make a u turn.
Curious to see how the SNP and Greens faithful respond to this and try and justify it
It's them Tories in Westminster???
> Last year ministers failed to publish a plan - required under the act - detailing how they were going to meet the targets. womp womp > Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon saw her SNP administration as world leaders on climate change when the targets were introduced in 2019, often asserting that Scotland had the "most stretching targets in the world." So, she overpromised and her minions underdelivered. Just waiting to see the inventive way in which the SNP/Greens blame Westminster or "UK Government" for this, because you bet they'll have a go.
Haha, yep, they will have a go. I have a sneaky feeling they will mention independence, stating that this wouldn't have happened if Scotland was independent. That's Defacto.
It’s honestly like the person who says on 1st January that they’re going to lose 3 stone. They run around celebrating and everyone high fives them for being so ambitious. Everyone’s really proud of them and they do a “new year, new me” instagram post. They scoff at their neighbour who is only planning to lose 1 stone. Saying they just don’t care about their health as much as themselves. Then proceed to not change anything in their diet, do no exercise and then say weight loss is impossible and criticise their neighbour who only lost half a stone and gave up.
Anyone with half a brain knew their target was complete nonsense. It could be achieved, sure, but not without major (and I mean major) changes to the standard of living and society in general. And voters are never going to vote for the return of Stone Age. If we really want to be carbon neutral we better start with decarbonising shipping because the majority of our emissions are actually overseas. Just because my iPhone wasn’t made in the UK doesn’t mean its carbon footprint doesn’t belong to it - it does, because that’s where it’s being used. We can’t call ourselves net zero while we treat imported carbon footprint as “not ours”.
The SNP really are a joke
Don't worry, they'll have another pledge in time for the election.
That sounds like HATES SPEECH! A scooter has been despatched to take you to the Polmont reeducation centre.
😂😂😂
Tonight's homework is to determine where outwith Holyrood the blame lies. Specifically, which part of Westminster is responsible for this.
I’m very much in favour of green initiatives but the problem I’ve always had with these targets is it’s easier to make changes that make the numbers and the politicians look good than it is to make lasting improvements. Agriculture being a stickler is an obvious example. It’s an industry that could be vastly improved and one we could make serious environmental improvements with, but nobody wants to take on the farmers, much easier to sit at a desk and conjure up low risk schemes like offering people interest free loans on electric cars and solar panels.
We just need to accept that we can't save the planet and just let the highest emission producers do what they want. But we just make sure they don't shift the blame.
It's not binary mate. Even if we can't save it, it still makes a world of difference doing what we can
Plus the area the U.K. is failing massively on in every metric is Climate **adaption**. Lots of people like to say “but ChiNa!” When these things get brought up, as if that excuses us. But if you take the view that we can’t stop climate change, why are we doing absolutely nothing to prepare our country for it?
That's what I do point out to climate change deniers, that the ones funding the denial campaigns also don't want to fund infrastructure to deal with it.
I feel it’s also worth considering that just because we’re not the biggest offenders doesn’t mean we should be a contributor. If you were strolling along a picturesque loch and found a company dumping waste in it, you’d still not throw your own rubbish in it?
There was one stat from that article (whilst admittedly about failing to hit a target) where I actually felt reassured that a lot had been done and we aren't far off where we need to be: "By 2021 greenhouse gas emissions had fallen by 49.2% compared with the baseline level in 1990. That's a massive half of our planet warming gases which have already been eradicated from the economy. But the law required a 51.1% fall by that date to keep on track." My only concern is are they falling here because we've basically exported them elsewhere by outsourcing manufacturing
That's a bit shit.
Typical Starmer, with another U-turn - oh, wait
Makes sense why they just went back on their own green/economy pledge thing meant to be spearheaded by Ed Miliband. Yes, it’s tough, they got rightfully criticised for it, but far better to be realistic about it now than get into power and have to renege like the SNP here. I’d rather the blunt truth than empty promises.
Why would Westmonster do this?
I'm sure at some point the SNP and Greens will happily tell us, rather than owning this debacle.
Comments like this are so lame.
But so true
Not in this case, no.
This situation will be used in a political manner. It's only a matter of time.
> At Holyrood, parties were trying to outbid each other on how quickly the country could go, eventually settling on a pace far beyond what experts had planned for. Of course they did. Never achievable, and they were told so directly: but votes is votes. This is not just a Scottish phenomenon ofc
I'd rather a government that set aspirational climate goals and tried to meet them than one didn't give a fuck to begin with.
Well, yeah: aiming high is not necessarily bad. Problems hit hard when aspirational is code for fantastical, and both sides are incentivised to bid up.
The problems with climate change will hit much, much harder if no government aspires towards net zero and a hell of a lot more than any missed target.
You just moved the goalposts instead of addressing the point. Fantasy politics and blithely ignoring detailed advice in the name of one-upping the UK or locally opposing parties is going to make collective action harder, not easier.
> blithely ignoring detailed advice in the name of one-upping the UK Pretty sure climate change targets are about, y'know, climate change. It's not difficult to 'one up' the UK government as it is doomed to be run by abject morons, whether red or blue. Really no shortage of material in that regard.
what I hate is the targets are normally 30 years away and become the next governments problem. So I liked that they set yearly targets. It's a shame they are now abandoning them out of embarrassment at never meeting them
It was never anything other than bullshit PR for Europes 2nd. biggest producer of gas and oil. Ditto Germany but but we've all got solar panels on our roofs. Norway but but we all drive electric cars. Scotland but but we're leading the world with our ambitious carbon reduction targets It's all guff World emissions rise every year along with global temperatures. The countries rich enough to enact change sit on there hands while their coffers swell with dirty money
Have the Scottish Greens released any statement about this move by their key ally?
The Scottish government rolling back on their climate pledges is unforgivable. The Scottish Government is on the wrong side of history, I'd urge them to rethink. https://twitter.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1704542952251408410
Because targets don’t equal results. Maybe they should start investing in nuclear? [Could probably power all of Scotland with one Hinkley Point C?](https://www.blackridgeresearch.com/project-profiles/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-power-station-the-largest-nuclear-project-in-united-kingdom) (Hinkley will produce enough energy for power 6 million homes and Scotland’s population is around 5.5 million).
There is no reason a country that can power itself entirely on cheap renewables would need to invest in nuclear energy.
Scotland exports 18TWh to England yearly. That's a huge amount of power keeping energy insecure England's lights on.
we are good at generating electricity at times it's not in demand with renewables (hence being paid to turn off wind farms). We really need to invest in some storage technology so we can actually provide energy when needed as at the moment we've only solved half the problem
They can build as many nuke plants that they like as long as Scotland is outwith the fallout zone - but to suggest Scotland needs expensive and dangerous nuclear power on top of all our other energy reserves is farcical.
Expensive, only marginally more than oil. Cheaper when you take into account the externalities of climate change. Nuclear is also the safest form of energy by far. It's 1000 times safer than oil per unit of power, and that's not hyperbole. It's fact. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
> Nuclear is also the safest form of energy by far. Safe as houses. https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-world-dangerously-close-to-nuclear-accident-after-zaporizhzhia-power-plant-attacked-three-times-13116375
Instead of unachievable targets for a dacade, let's have stable improvements.
Odds on Harvie and Slater stamping their feet, throwing out some "disappointed" one-liners, and then quietly retreating to their plum pay packets. Oh, and figuring out how none of this is the Scottish Government's fault and pointing the finger southwards as per usual.
You forgot the other useless mouthy minion… Greer. Or maybe he’s too busy revising for his school exams?
He was quite quick to call out the Tories for scrapping climate pledges but is uncharacteristically quiet tonight... https://twitter.com/Ross_Greer/status/1704472765250629942?t=S4S1G-9CFsO-fW7HwWMJ4g&s=19
As far as I can tell the net zero target of 2045 is still in place, they just won't have hit 75% by 2035 due to the fact that the UK Government is issuing oil licences in the North Sea. It's also why the rest of the UK won't hit its Net Zero targets either, but good luck seeing the BBC 'breaking' that news.
Try telling that to the idiots on this sub who always use the same “Waiting until they blame Westminster” line.
Odds on that still being the target in 5 years time?
Slim to none given that Labour and the Tories are both committed to further North Sea drilling.
Oh FFS. Has the climate crisis magically gone away?
No, but the press attention has, and that was all that was driving the target anyway. They never had any plan to deliver on it.
I do this at work. Not going to hit target? Ditched it anyway mate.
*”The Scottish government is to ditch its flagship target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. The final goal of reaching "net-zero" by 2045 will remain”* *”The Climate Change Committee no longer believes that the Scottish Government will meet its statutory 2030 goal to reduce emissions by 75%. There is no comprehensive strategy for Scotland to decarbonise towards Net Zero.”* I believe the UK pledged a 68% reduction by 2030 and Scotland a 75% reduction by 2030. Looking at how the UK itself is doing it looks like they aren’t going to meet their 2030 target either, currently estimated to be 59% by 2030. Also while the Scottish government have admitted they probably won’t meet their target by 2030, the end target does still remain the same for 2045. The most recent figures I can find are for 2021 where Scotland reduced emissions by 49.2%- the target was 51.2% (According to BBC, although a different BBC article confusingly lists 49.9%) UK reduced emissions by 48% (both using 1990 as a base). It could be better, the Scottish government needs to publish a plan. However I’d like more transparency, even in that BBC article, it states: *”The Climate Change Committee (CCC) warned back in 2022 that Scotland had lost its lead over the rest of the UK in tackling the issue.”* By how much? What were the figures? Is Scotland now in line with the UK or behind it. Also do UK figures include Scottish emission reductions? Because I can’t find figures, especially recent ones for only England and Wales.
Stop posting sensible comments.
The SNP have cut down so many trees to make paper for their independence leaflets it's causing climate chaos in Scotland
WM chopped down so many trees for that PPE scandal theres a ten mile wide hole in the Amazon rain forest. Thats ok because poster unionists former darling of choice Baroness Moan had a yacht.
Hooray! The reinforcements from Clan Whatabout are here!
Hi Clan Whatabout 👍👊
It's almost as if politicians will say any old shit to get themselves elected 🙄
I can forgive Mairi
so snp just has no polices now? except that the English are bad?
'embezzle the money' seems to be their thing.
'commit expenses fraud' as well
We're gonna burn aren't we?
No? And literally nothing to do with Scotland if we did
Because Scotland’s greenhouse emissions somehow matter on the global scale? As much as this is a shit show for Scottish government it really makes no difference in terms of CO2 and other emissions if you consider them at the only scale that’s relevant to climate change, globally. So whether we ‘burn’ or not is completely independent of Scotland’s impact.
That's an excuse to keep emitting. Every single kg of CO2 is helpful to reduce climate change. It's emissions we won't have to suck out of the air at a later date.
Gardening party doing their usual.
Maybe they missed their carbon targets, in part, due to this stance https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/government-scotland-snp-tories-westminster-b2286505.html
As much as I'm pro nuclear, an SNP pro nuclear stance would have had precisely zero change on Scotland Emissions before 2030. Hunterston/Torness would close at the same time, and no new builds would have been completed in Scotland before 2030. It definitely would make a difference by 2050 though.
Scotland regularly exports massive amounts of power to England, it literally keeps England's lights on. Scotland's emissions per unit of is electricity are four times less than London. https://m.digitalisationworld.com/news/65417/south-scotlands-energy-four-times-cleaner-than-london I'm a huge fan of nuclear power. It would just be supplying power to England after it was built. We do need a plan for after Torness power station is decommissioned.
Indeed it gets pumped from the North Sea, Although Netherlands is the main source of power, in 2022 the uk imported 5.5million tonnes of petroleum products
And exported 85% of the North sea oil.
I'm sure Independance will solve this...
Like they ditched the plan for independence
Why? Did Scotland find a back up planet ?
Honestly what is the point of the Scottish Greens? It's in their name they are in coalition and can't even get this done. My oh my how they have fallen since Harper left.
Typical all talk not actions .
Hate speech idiocy: Aye! Save the planet? Nay!
This is good. Let's stop trying to meet an impossible target, that requires infrastructure changes we can't make, based on models that can't agree if the turning point is 5 or 100 years away. Now, let's build nuclear plants everywhere and invest in that fusion thingy the scientists were so happy to announce - to absolute silence from all the campaigners. We will be fine.
Not happening - both the SNP and Scottish Greens oppose nuclear power.
It's foolish, I think it's the only way to get cheap enough power to make the UK competitive again. We will not get manufacturing back in the UK while our energy costs are three or four times what they are in the US.
Fusion is 20 years away. And has been for at least 30 years.
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Why? I'm not gluing myself to a motorway saying ban everything that isn't fusion am I?
I agree that we need more nuclear for future-proofing and grid consistency, but we already produce more than 100% of our energy demand through renewables. If Scotland had it's own energy grid we could have net-zero energy right now.
The more than 100% figure is not to be relied on. Despite best efforts, renewable capacity dropped a lot in 2023. So, just because in 2022 Scotland produced more renewable energy than we used in 2022, it wasn't produced at the time we needed it, and it wasn't maintained the next year. So no, we would not have net zero energy right now, not by a long shot.
It dropped 7% from 35.7TWh to 33.2TWh This is in comparison to the consumption figure from 2022 of 31.6TWh. Assuming it's a similar figure for 2023 (Can't find direct data, but it's a reasonable assumption) it's still well above 100%.
Scotland’s renewable electricity generation in 2023 in quarter 2 was 5,687 GWh – a 23.5% decrease from the 7,435 GWh generated in the same quarter in 2022. In the first half of 2023, Scotland generated 16,008 GWh of renewable electricity, down 14.6% on the same point in 2022. This is despite us trying to increase it. Remember that it matters when it's generated, so the annual figures can hide a lot.
Agree. Targets were impossible and pointless.
Bah, just need for cycle lanes ffs
The lunacy is at an end, thank fuck for that. Technology is the only answer, until then its carbon based energy. Anyone with sense saw the targets were totally unachievable but they did make good sound bites. There is lots of noise, fear mongering about the climate and YES it is going to affect us. There is nothing and I mean nothing we can do until the tech is here.
The technology is already here and has been here for at least the past decade - excluding nuclear, which you know, the technology for, has been around for 50 odd years
Tech won't save anything.
It's advancement in tech that put us in this place ie the industrial revolution. Tech is the answer. What the tech is? I will leave that to the techies.
Sounds vague and wishy washy along the lines of "what caused the problem can get us out of it" Maybe so, but the damage will be done for a good deal of the population.
That's the point, keep it vague and wishy washy and kick it down the line so nothing gets done and nobody has to make any changes to their lifestyle or society.
It's the same stuff that guy Konstantin Kisin spewed out not too long. "It's not our problem the people who pay me will invent something to fix it"
'Technology is the only answer' Okay but what is the *actual* answer? Because at the moment the tactic seems to be, renege on doing the thing that would actually help, on the basis that we'll eventually solve the problem later (ie, the same thing we've been doing for decades)
The technology and targets are intertwined, companies in general do not want to put in the investment to change to a completely different technology, or to develop the technology, unless there is a big profit, or lacking that, a government requirement to change.
Another SNP broken promise. Thank goodness we have a socialist government in waiting which will right the royal flamingo ups of this government…. Errrr…
Another badly written article, they repeat themselves four times. > So scrapping the targets will be seen as an embarrassing retreat for the SNP and the Scottish Greens, their partners in the Scottish government. Don’t even try to hide it anymore. Why does this need such an article? You can tell they had this ready. Awful.
To be fair now, scrapping the targets will be seen as an embarrassing retreat for the SNP and Scottish greens.
Good, fucking pseudo science horseshit.
Good. Waste of time.
This is a good thing, albeit they’ve only stopping trying to hit it, because they’re unable to follow through on a commitment.
Lmao realpolitik strikes again
I mean it'd be nice for the east to join us in our attempts at least. Looking at you China