SNP's scrapping of climate change target is a failure as pathetic as their excuses – Scotsman comment

Scotland’s much-vaunted target of cutting emissions by 75 per cent by 2030, McAllan agreed, was now “out of reach” and had therefore been scrapped. However, just as Sunak insisted the UK would still hit net zero by 2050, McAllan insisted Scotland would do so by 2045. In the SNP’s world of make-believe politics, Scotland is still better than England. And of course, the SNP is not to blame; the fault lies, obviously, with Westminster.

When the government set its ambitious 2030 target in 2019, it was always going to be a struggle. But ministers then singularly failed to struggle – to make a serious, sustained effort – to achieve it. That, however, didn’t stop attempts to use the target to make political capital with a deluge of sanctimony that may have persuaded some it was serious about the issue. Even in failure, McAllan issued another nationalist recruiting call, saying the “constraints of devolution” – the lack of independence, that magical panacea for all our ills – meant the Scottish Government had “one hand tied behind our back”.

A collision with cold, hard reality

In a sense, this demonstrates everything that is wrong with the current government: talking a good game while failing, abjectly, to deliver. It can be seen in the failure to cut the educational attainment gap between rich and poor, the failure to dual the A9, and the Glen Sannox’s painted-on windows at its 2017 'launch’. Seven years later, CalMac still awaits its literal delivery.

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Some might have thought the addition of idealistic Scottish Greens to the idealistic nationalists in government would have led to an improvement in progress. Instead, everything Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater touch seems to end in disaster. Is there anything this government is actually good at? The abandonment of the 2030 target represents the collision of the nationalists’ political game-playing and the Greens’ wishful thinking with cold, hard reality.

Responding to the news, NFU Scotland vice-president Alasdair Macnab welcomed the government's “change in direction”, which is unsurprising as farmers live in a very real world. Asking agriculture, industry, homeowners or anyone to do things that cannot possibly be done is idiotic, ridiculous and counterproductive. Astonishingly, five years after the 2030 target was set, Macnab said that “the emphasis must shift to ‘how’ rather than being a hostage to ‘when’”. “How” questions should have been the government’s focus from day one.

Cost of climate change

A recent study estimated that the global cost of damage caused by climate change will be $38 trillion a year by 2050. So the £2 billion that is to be spent on making Scotland’s railways more “resilient” against extreme weather is merely a fraction of the coming costs, for those interested in counting.

Competent government matters in all things. But it matters a thousand times more when managing the fundamental transition of our economy to net zero – a historic challenge that is vitally important to the health of our economy as much as the global climate. It is a hugely difficult and complex process that necessarily involves lengthy negotiations, with much cajoling and compromises, to bring people with the government and actually make things happen.

Green ministers who drop diktats from on high while defiantly sticking their heads in the clouds and SNP politicians of limited ability, ambition or interest, who merely cosplay as environmentalists, simply will not cut it. Their failings are as pathetic as their excuses.