Ask if the Greens are helping or hindering

Pat Kane: Why does there need to be roll back from Green era for economy growth?

Politicians have a duty to protect the population, to safeguard their wellbeing and to seek to improve their lives. Application of green policies needs to recognise that.

In terms of protection, resilience has to have salience, and it has to be borne in mind that any actions in Scotland to prevent further climate change will have negligible impact globally. This isn’t to write off becoming carbon neutral – in fact reducing reliance on fossil fuels makes eminent sense – but on a realistic timescale that doesn’t cause massive disruption.

Judging by their performance in government, the dogma-driven Scottish Greens are a barrier to achieving zero carbon, not a means of delivering it, and have failed in fulfilling the basic tenets of good governance.

Bryan Stuart

I accept there are some Green Party members who think they are uniquely able to care for our environment.

May I suggest there is a large section of the SNP membership whose principles helped inform Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf and who narrowly passed the “remit back” motion on investing in just transition at SNP National Council.

That reality cannot be ignored. The test over the next few months will be whether the party will have the courage to allow informed (not ideologically or factionally driven) debate on a large variety of complex issues surrounding how and at what speed to achieve the forms of just transition which will end poverty and unjustifiable extreme wealth without further hastening the climate crisis. Roland Chaplain

Just as we can’t expect the Greens to be a nationalist party, though they do actually support independence, we also can’t expect the SNP to be exactly the same as the Greens even though they also have a genuine interest in the environment.

If Kane wants to support the Greens over the SNP already (since we don’t know yet exactly what policies will be prioritised by John Swinney’s Cabinet) then that is up to him, but the SNP need to win over all of Scotland and a zero-growth strategy won’t inspire enough people to actually vote for independence.

The SNP will put the Scottish people’s interests first and the best way to do that is independence. Pat says: “We have made headline commitments to a circular economy. But we can’t push through a bottle scheme?”

No, because the British government blocked it and under the devolved settlement Britain ultimately retains real power.

So independence has to be the priority rather than living on a leash held by the Tories or Labour, and when it is achieved we will be able to follow whatever policy priorities we want with full control over our own resources and all the levers of power.

Joe Middleton