The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
SNP talk a good game but the hypocrisy over climate change targets is staggering
The decision to delay our climate targets is unforgivable. I, frankly, cannot believe that there is such an abdication of political responsibility in the face of this crisis.
It is not just bad for the economy, which it absolutely is, but it is bad for our planet. Our children and our future generations will be the ones to suffer.
These are, of course, not my reflections on the SNP government’s decision to scrap its target to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030.
These are Humza Yousaf ’s own words – barely six months ago – after the UK Government prevaricated on some of its own climate targets.
The hypocrisy here is so galling that it is hardly worth dwelling on.
Better to consider first of all how we got into this position and – even better still – how we get out of it.
It has been obvious for years the one lever of government that the SNP has really excelled at pulling has been the press release.
Successive nationalist administrations have talked such a good game on so many issues that most observers have forgotten that politics – like football – is a resultsdriven industry.
On no issue is this more apparent than on climate change.
SNP ministers wilfully set absurd targets (naturally more testing than the rest of the UK) without any plan to meet them, content instead to travel the world and claim others were in awe of their ambition alone, while also never missing an opportunity to trash the UK Government and its supposed indifference to climate catastrophe.
This method of government is the equivalent of me demanding a rapturous reception at the coming Paris Olympic Games having announced my intention to run a faster 100m than Usain Bolt – just don’t watch the actual race, please.
Attempting to confuse ambition and delivery is, of course, a fairly transparent sleight of hand and the SNP deserves credit for having apparently succeeded at it for so long.
Indeed, the other big losers from this debacle are not red-faced SNP ministers, but their partners in government, the Scottish Greens.
The failure to meet the 75% target – let alone Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater’s more ambitious 80% target – once again calls into question how deep their green credentials really run.
If tackling climate change was genuinely their top priority, the SNP’s failure would surely be a resignation matter.
If they remain as ministers – as seems likely – then it is yet more evidence perhaps not that the emperor has no clothes, but certainly that the environmentalists have no sandals.
But if an unlikely combination of SNP spin doctors and guileless nationalists cosplaying as environmentalists got us into this mess, how then do we get out of it?
Yousaf was absolutely right when he warned of the terrible economic and generational consequences of missed climate targets so, for all the political hot air this announcement will generate, it is vital we get it right.
The first act must be to try to remove some – if not all – of the politics from the issue.
This means SNP ministers scrapping government-by-press-release and instead working constructively with the UK Government and others to meet our shared obligations.
But the truth is no party – SNP, Conservative, Labour, or even the Greens – has a perfect record on this issue, nor a monopoly on desire to achieve net-zero quickly. Point scoring, while irresistible in the face of such nationalist hypocrisy, is sadly not constructive.
The second act must be for our leaders, Scottish and UK, to be more honest about the trade-offs required to achieve our climate targets.
Too much and for too long, politicians of all stripes have claimed we can have our compost and fertilise with it on the environment, but this too is a sleight of hand.
Admonishing the North Sea oil and gas industry, for instance, while simultaneously requiring it to provide the technology, skills and funding to meet net-zero commitments is neither sustainable nor fair.
Finally, we need a genuine focus on actually reducing emissions, rather than just setting targets – world-leading or otherwise – and then talking about how they might be achieved. The reality is that, for all their talk, the current SNP-Green administration has failed to deliver on vital environmental measures – from glass recycling to heat pumps – and this must urgently change if we are to meet our climate obligations.
This latest SNP failure is, like so many others of late, a failure that Yousaf has inherited but it is nevertheless still, at least for the moment, a failure that is his responsibility to correct.
By his own words, he clearly understands the importance of meeting climate targets.
The question is whether he can do something no other SNP leader has done – look beyond the press release and actually do something about meeting them.
Point scoring, while irresistible... is sadly not constructive