SNP abandoning future generations with climate announcement
The Scottish Government has abandoned future generations after ignoring key climate experts' advice today, when they published concerningly weak new climate budgets, say the Scottish Greens.
Scottish Greens Co-Leader Patrick Harvie has slammed it as “yet another step away from evidence-based climate policy”.
Last month, the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) published a report urging the Scottish Government to take immediate action to reduce carbon emissions if they are to meet their 2045 net-zero target. With the publication of today's carbon budgets, the SNP have ignored the advice from the CCC on reducing pollution from agriculture and other sectors.
The newly published carbon budgets lack ambition to reduce emissions, with the previous target of a 75% reduction by 2030 now reduced to 57%.
Patrick Harvie said:
“This is a deeply troubling announcement from the SNP, and takes us another step away from evidence-based climate policy. We’ve known for years that ambitious targets alone aren’t enough to tackle the climate emergency, but that means we should be ramping up action to protect our planet, not watering down the targets.
“Climate experts have been clear that the Scottish Government has failed to take on board the urgent action needed. They issued warning after warning, but the SNP have failed to step up and tackle the climate crisis head on.
“The UKCCC is clear - we can reach Scotland’s 2045 target. But that will only happen if we are brave enough to have less words and more action to get the job done. Today's announcement does not show bravery from the SNP.
“The government has many of the solutions they need ready at their fingertips. Investing in climate action will create good jobs and save people money too.
“We can switch to clean heat to warm our homes, invest in public transport to reduce cars on our roads, and support rural communities to cut emissions from land use and farming, but instead, the SNP have decided to shy away from taking action, as if they hope someone else is coming to save us.
“We are in a climate emergency, and we need to start acting like it, so that future generations don’t look back and ask why Scotland abandoned them when we had the opportunity to fix things.”