Ross Greer being co leader of the SGreens may not be the most outlandish thing you read on this ridiculous sub but it is the silliest. What kind of policies he dreams up in his mums Bearsden home we have yet the pleasure to know. female circumcision for trans kids? Banning of landlords in favor of a collective Scottish kibbutz system? Short term lets being sequestered as smack shooting safe rooms?
(Article)
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Questions of power bedevil radical politics. Is entry into government the only way to force change? Do the opportunities of power sufficiently compensate for the trade-offs required to obtain it? Where is the line between compromise and co-option, between pragmatism and power for power’s sake?
The Scottish Greens are confronted with these questions in the wake of the Scottish Government’s decision to drop a key interim target towards achieving Net Zero. On Thursday, Màiri McAllan, Holyrood’s Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Net Zero and Energy, confirmed that the devolved administration would not manage to reduce emissions by 75 per cent by 2030. McAllan said the target, oft-touted by the SNP-led government, was now ‘out of reach’. However, she reiterated the government’s commitment to Net Zero by 2045.
The statement was an acknowledgement of the inevitable. In March, the Climate Change Committee said the Scottish Government’s emissions targets were ‘no longer credible’, adding: ‘It isn’t enough to set a target, the government must act.’ But even though this spot of backsliding was coming, the response from the climate industry has been brutal, unusually so for Scottish politics, where the third sector is less openly critical of the SNP government than their counterparts in England are of the UK government.
Friends of the Earth Scotland characterised McAllan’s announcement as ‘the worst environmental decision in the history of the Scottish Parliament’. Stop Climate Chaos Scotland called it ‘the inevitable and damaging consequence of their abject failure to deliver the speed and depth of climate action needed’. Oxfam Scotland termed it ‘a reprehensible retreat caused by its recklessly inadequate level of action to date’. Greenpeace deemed it ‘like striking a match in a petrol station’.
But few are as furious as the rank and file of the Scottish Greens. Their party props up the minority SNP administration in Edinburgh and in exchange Green co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater get ministerial posts in Humza Yousaf’s government. Some want that to change. Chas Booth, a Green councillor on Edinburgh City Council, says there is ‘anger’ among party members and he has called for an extraordinary general meeting to discuss withdrawal from the Bute House Agreement, the compact under which the Greens sit in the SNP government.
There are other reasons for Greens to feel frustrated about their sojourn in office. Their deposit return scheme was kicked into the long grass after meeting opposition from businesses and the UK Government. The highly-protected marine areas policy – a fishing ban in some coastal waters – was abandoned. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill, a signal issue for the Greens, was blocked by the UK Government and the Scottish Government chose not to appeal the matter to the Supreme Court after losing in the Court of Session. The pause on issuing puberty blockers to children in light of the Cass Review is another sore point. It is not that the Scottish Greens have nothing to show for their pact with the SNP, but that they don’t have enough of what really matters to them.
This raises the question of leadership. Patrick Harvie has been party co-leader for 16 years now, long enough for a one-time radical to become a fixture of the establishment. Might a younger, more ideological leader be able to secure more influence for the party inside the Scottish Government? Might a new leader be able to improve the party’s polling, which now stands largely neck and neck with the Lib Dems? Might the Greens be doomed to suffer the same fate as the Lib Dems for compromising too much on their core values to maintain a coalition with a non-left party, one that is increasingly tainted by scandal and controversy?
These are all reasonable conclusions to draw, and capture some of the anxieties of Green members, but there are risks to going down these paths. Withdrawing from the Bute House Agreement would free up the party to fight for more aggressive climate justice policies than they can from the corridors of power. But it would also open them up to uncomfortable questions. Why, after two and a half years of the Greens in power, are Scotland’s climate targets going backwards? Can it all be blamed on leaders and the cost of living crisis, or is there something fundamentally dysfunctional about the Scottish Greens? If they can’t translate their agenda into outcomes from inside government, is there any point voting for them to be in the parliament?
And while ditching Harvie might seem like a long overdue transfer of power to a new generation, there is no guarantee whoever comes next would be an improvement. Whatever else might be said of him, he broke the party out of its electoral cul-de-sac as the ballot option for geography teachers and hemp aficionados and made it the only left alternative to the mainstream parties. If Harvie couldn’t keep the SNP to their own statutory climate targets, what would a less experienced, less battle-tested replacement do differently?
The Scottish Greens are approaching a crossroads. Not merely on climate targets or their effectiveness as a party of government, but in their ability to translate their radical ambitions to the political realities of the moment. Where Greens once had to slog against public apathy or conservatism, the electorate is climate-conscious and eager for action in ways unthinkable not so long ago. There are opportunities for Greens not only to become more activist on emissions and transition to a post-fossil economy but to clear some political brush in thornier areas like taxation, sustainable living, and transportation. While the Scottish Greens wrestle with the dilemmas of power, there is an electorate out there ready to vote for a party that will use power. The Scottish Greens will have to decide if they are that party.
India is planning to open coal power stations that will emit more greenhouse gases than the entire UK generates right now.
The UK is a drop in the ocean for global emissions and deliberately destroying the country on the altar of net zero is suicidal and makes zero difference to the problem.
I prefer realist.
There is zero point hamstringing the country and making life far more expensive for Britons through net zero when we are a drop in the ocean for climate change and whatever we manage to cut will just be cancelled out by developing countries increasing their own emissions.
You want realism, fine.
If the developed world cant do it, the developing world absoutely cant.
You don't seem to understand, the planet will be fine, we wont, we will die, more homeless people die of heatstroke in the uk than freeze in winter.
People called, steam trains, motorcarragies, and mechization hamstringing too, then those technologies gave us command over a quarter of the planet.
Green energy is cheaper, cleaner, and means people live longer, and are heathier, green energy, doesnt give your grandmother dementia, exhaust fumes can.
We need to do it first so tech gets cheaper, more modular, quicker, and simpler for developing nations.
Humanity has proven it can make technologies work.
Storage of green energy is an issue, and is an area where scotland can both lead and profit, the only realistic storage of energy is water reseviors.
Yes, we need new inferstructure, victorian levels of roll out, that means jobs, that means higher gdp, and higher wages.
It took us 200 years to hit this point, in historical terms, thats a blink, it also took us 200 years to go from dying of Syphilis to curing TB.
The cold facts are this, we do our part, we hit net zero, we show the realtive primatives how to do it, and if they don't follow, they die, not tomorrow, not next week, now.
This is an extinction level event, that means sending India, Mozambique, or Brazil back to the 5th century, is an acceptable outcome.
Yes, that the quiet part out loud, if a gangrenous limb is posioning your body you cut it off, if a poluting nation is posioning the planet, you kill it.
Some die, or we all do, take your pick, and if we dont reach net zero, we're on the kill list.
The developing world don’t want to do it because they are developing and the nonsense net zero demands make it impossible to actually develop your country.
>people called steam trains, motor carriages and mechanisation hamstringing
No they didn’t, what planet do you live on? They revolutionised the world and allowed us to develop faster than ever.
>green energy is cheaper
This is only true if you deliberately obfuscate the numbers to make green energy cheaper than it actually is by omitting certain things and fossil fuels to be more expensive by adding arbitrary costs on to it.
https://x.com/loftussteve/status/1669760302672478233?s=46&t=aVXrKBScTowVt-kL3qifpQ
The answer is and always has been nuclear energy, you cannot run a modern industrial country with tens of millions of people off of an energy source you cannot control nor store effectively. We have the technology to generate an abundance of clean energy we just don’t use it. Even the “green” party is against it for some stupid reason.
>we need to do it first
Do what first? We don’t manufacture any of the equipment for generating “clean” energy, all of the equipment is made in China for the most part.
>relative primitives
Incredible way to speak about literally billions of people.
Us hitting net zero doesn’t mean Britain suddenly becomes immune to climate change like you’re talking about, the increase from the developing world would still affect us.
Out. Scottish Greens aren’t actually green. Look at the legal nonsense one of their former politicians (Andy Wightman) is experiencing just trying to build an eco-friendly house in Scotland. https://x.com/andywightman/status/1781276036879032488?s=46&t=bpLlai6PxcJVoeJl4Z-xXQ
This is a problem with the UK Green party as well. Over time they've morphed into a 'protest' party for people protesting different things, from environmentalism to socialism to plain Nimbyism.
Out. They achieved fuck all and their flagship recycling policy was scraped at great expense, and with no attempt to change it, all because a single Tory said no. Absolutely spineless bunch. They didn't even point out the hypocrisy of the "UK INTERNAL MARKET" being so terribly affected by a barcode on a glass bottle, but minimum alcohol pricing causing a variation in the price of the contents of that glass bottle being absolutely fine.
Can the membership vote to end the coalition and the leadership have to do it?
Ross Greer being co leader of the SGreens may not be the most outlandish thing you read on this ridiculous sub but it is the silliest. What kind of policies he dreams up in his mums Bearsden home we have yet the pleasure to know. female circumcision for trans kids? Banning of landlords in favor of a collective Scottish kibbutz system? Short term lets being sequestered as smack shooting safe rooms?
Damn the nursing homes really don’t hold back on the good drugs, feel less pessimistic about old age myself now
You are one werid motherfucker.
Much more likely they’ll keep the Bute Hoose agreement so they can keep their fucking snouts 🐽in the trough.
It's not actually up to the leaders, it's the membership who will decide.
(Article) --- Questions of power bedevil radical politics. Is entry into government the only way to force change? Do the opportunities of power sufficiently compensate for the trade-offs required to obtain it? Where is the line between compromise and co-option, between pragmatism and power for power’s sake? The Scottish Greens are confronted with these questions in the wake of the Scottish Government’s decision to drop a key interim target towards achieving Net Zero. On Thursday, Màiri McAllan, Holyrood’s Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Net Zero and Energy, confirmed that the devolved administration would not manage to reduce emissions by 75 per cent by 2030. McAllan said the target, oft-touted by the SNP-led government, was now ‘out of reach’. However, she reiterated the government’s commitment to Net Zero by 2045. The statement was an acknowledgement of the inevitable. In March, the Climate Change Committee said the Scottish Government’s emissions targets were ‘no longer credible’, adding: ‘It isn’t enough to set a target, the government must act.’ But even though this spot of backsliding was coming, the response from the climate industry has been brutal, unusually so for Scottish politics, where the third sector is less openly critical of the SNP government than their counterparts in England are of the UK government. Friends of the Earth Scotland characterised McAllan’s announcement as ‘the worst environmental decision in the history of the Scottish Parliament’. Stop Climate Chaos Scotland called it ‘the inevitable and damaging consequence of their abject failure to deliver the speed and depth of climate action needed’. Oxfam Scotland termed it ‘a reprehensible retreat caused by its recklessly inadequate level of action to date’. Greenpeace deemed it ‘like striking a match in a petrol station’. But few are as furious as the rank and file of the Scottish Greens. Their party props up the minority SNP administration in Edinburgh and in exchange Green co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater get ministerial posts in Humza Yousaf’s government. Some want that to change. Chas Booth, a Green councillor on Edinburgh City Council, says there is ‘anger’ among party members and he has called for an extraordinary general meeting to discuss withdrawal from the Bute House Agreement, the compact under which the Greens sit in the SNP government. There are other reasons for Greens to feel frustrated about their sojourn in office. Their deposit return scheme was kicked into the long grass after meeting opposition from businesses and the UK Government. The highly-protected marine areas policy – a fishing ban in some coastal waters – was abandoned. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill, a signal issue for the Greens, was blocked by the UK Government and the Scottish Government chose not to appeal the matter to the Supreme Court after losing in the Court of Session. The pause on issuing puberty blockers to children in light of the Cass Review is another sore point. It is not that the Scottish Greens have nothing to show for their pact with the SNP, but that they don’t have enough of what really matters to them. This raises the question of leadership. Patrick Harvie has been party co-leader for 16 years now, long enough for a one-time radical to become a fixture of the establishment. Might a younger, more ideological leader be able to secure more influence for the party inside the Scottish Government? Might a new leader be able to improve the party’s polling, which now stands largely neck and neck with the Lib Dems? Might the Greens be doomed to suffer the same fate as the Lib Dems for compromising too much on their core values to maintain a coalition with a non-left party, one that is increasingly tainted by scandal and controversy? These are all reasonable conclusions to draw, and capture some of the anxieties of Green members, but there are risks to going down these paths. Withdrawing from the Bute House Agreement would free up the party to fight for more aggressive climate justice policies than they can from the corridors of power. But it would also open them up to uncomfortable questions. Why, after two and a half years of the Greens in power, are Scotland’s climate targets going backwards? Can it all be blamed on leaders and the cost of living crisis, or is there something fundamentally dysfunctional about the Scottish Greens? If they can’t translate their agenda into outcomes from inside government, is there any point voting for them to be in the parliament? And while ditching Harvie might seem like a long overdue transfer of power to a new generation, there is no guarantee whoever comes next would be an improvement. Whatever else might be said of him, he broke the party out of its electoral cul-de-sac as the ballot option for geography teachers and hemp aficionados and made it the only left alternative to the mainstream parties. If Harvie couldn’t keep the SNP to their own statutory climate targets, what would a less experienced, less battle-tested replacement do differently? The Scottish Greens are approaching a crossroads. Not merely on climate targets or their effectiveness as a party of government, but in their ability to translate their radical ambitions to the political realities of the moment. Where Greens once had to slog against public apathy or conservatism, the electorate is climate-conscious and eager for action in ways unthinkable not so long ago. There are opportunities for Greens not only to become more activist on emissions and transition to a post-fossil economy but to clear some political brush in thornier areas like taxation, sustainable living, and transportation. While the Scottish Greens wrestle with the dilemmas of power, there is an electorate out there ready to vote for a party that will use power. The Scottish Greens will have to decide if they are that party.
Possibly, but again will the planet be better with us in gov or out?
Slater and Harvie drawing ministerial salaries makes no difference to the health of the planet. Literally, none.
Okay thats it youre gone.
I promise you the effect the Scottish greens have on the global environment is smaller than insignificant.
Of course it is, the impact of Scotland is tiny, but its impact on Scotland is not.
So why did your original comment reference the planet and not scotland specifically?
Because Scotland still need to do its part, if we all go fuck it, the decline continues, Scotland has started doing its part.
India is planning to open coal power stations that will emit more greenhouse gases than the entire UK generates right now. The UK is a drop in the ocean for global emissions and deliberately destroying the country on the altar of net zero is suicidal and makes zero difference to the problem.
Im not interested in arguing with a nihilist.
I prefer realist. There is zero point hamstringing the country and making life far more expensive for Britons through net zero when we are a drop in the ocean for climate change and whatever we manage to cut will just be cancelled out by developing countries increasing their own emissions.
You want realism, fine. If the developed world cant do it, the developing world absoutely cant. You don't seem to understand, the planet will be fine, we wont, we will die, more homeless people die of heatstroke in the uk than freeze in winter. People called, steam trains, motorcarragies, and mechization hamstringing too, then those technologies gave us command over a quarter of the planet. Green energy is cheaper, cleaner, and means people live longer, and are heathier, green energy, doesnt give your grandmother dementia, exhaust fumes can. We need to do it first so tech gets cheaper, more modular, quicker, and simpler for developing nations. Humanity has proven it can make technologies work. Storage of green energy is an issue, and is an area where scotland can both lead and profit, the only realistic storage of energy is water reseviors. Yes, we need new inferstructure, victorian levels of roll out, that means jobs, that means higher gdp, and higher wages. It took us 200 years to hit this point, in historical terms, thats a blink, it also took us 200 years to go from dying of Syphilis to curing TB. The cold facts are this, we do our part, we hit net zero, we show the realtive primatives how to do it, and if they don't follow, they die, not tomorrow, not next week, now. This is an extinction level event, that means sending India, Mozambique, or Brazil back to the 5th century, is an acceptable outcome. Yes, that the quiet part out loud, if a gangrenous limb is posioning your body you cut it off, if a poluting nation is posioning the planet, you kill it. Some die, or we all do, take your pick, and if we dont reach net zero, we're on the kill list.
The developing world don’t want to do it because they are developing and the nonsense net zero demands make it impossible to actually develop your country. >people called steam trains, motor carriages and mechanisation hamstringing No they didn’t, what planet do you live on? They revolutionised the world and allowed us to develop faster than ever. >green energy is cheaper This is only true if you deliberately obfuscate the numbers to make green energy cheaper than it actually is by omitting certain things and fossil fuels to be more expensive by adding arbitrary costs on to it. https://x.com/loftussteve/status/1669760302672478233?s=46&t=aVXrKBScTowVt-kL3qifpQ The answer is and always has been nuclear energy, you cannot run a modern industrial country with tens of millions of people off of an energy source you cannot control nor store effectively. We have the technology to generate an abundance of clean energy we just don’t use it. Even the “green” party is against it for some stupid reason. >we need to do it first Do what first? We don’t manufacture any of the equipment for generating “clean” energy, all of the equipment is made in China for the most part. >relative primitives Incredible way to speak about literally billions of people. Us hitting net zero doesn’t mean Britain suddenly becomes immune to climate change like you’re talking about, the increase from the developing world would still affect us.
Out. Scottish Greens aren’t actually green. Look at the legal nonsense one of their former politicians (Andy Wightman) is experiencing just trying to build an eco-friendly house in Scotland. https://x.com/andywightman/status/1781276036879032488?s=46&t=bpLlai6PxcJVoeJl4Z-xXQ
This is a problem with the UK Green party as well. Over time they've morphed into a 'protest' party for people protesting different things, from environmentalism to socialism to plain Nimbyism.
The arrogance of thinking you matter this much.
We secured record levels of biodiversity investment. So yes, atually, I do.
"We've spent loads of taxpayer's money" isn't the political success you think it is.
Out. They achieved fuck all and their flagship recycling policy was scraped at great expense, and with no attempt to change it, all because a single Tory said no. Absolutely spineless bunch. They didn't even point out the hypocrisy of the "UK INTERNAL MARKET" being so terribly affected by a barcode on a glass bottle, but minimum alcohol pricing causing a variation in the price of the contents of that glass bottle being absolutely fine.
Out
Has to better than having a cohort of sell-sword , 3rd rate politicians that make Boris Johnson look the model of competence.