Meeting of the Parliament 25 September 2019
It would be remiss of me not to thank everyone who has lobbied, protested and provided evidence on the bill. There is an incredible youthful climate movement out there, which is certainly inspiring Green members. Those involved in the movement are a huge strength and testament.
As many of the hundreds of emails that I have received this week spell out, the science shows that, at the current rate of emissions, Scotland will have used our entire carbon budget for 2°C in the next 10 years. There is no turning back from that—we will be locked into a world with more suffering. The climate crisis is deepening. A new report that the IPCC published today warns that accelerating impacts on the oceans put 1 billion people at risk. This week, the UN has said that, even if all the Governments around the world meet their targets, we will go well beyond manageable levels of climate change.
This crisis demands political risk taking. However uncomfortable it may feel to challenge sectors such as farming or oil and gas to change, that will pale by comparison to the outrage that will be felt in the years to come as the real impacts of climate breakdown kick in. As many other members have done, I can look at the long list of improvements to the bill and recognise that, 10 years ago, they would have felt like big wins and steps of progress that we could all celebrate together.
The tweaks to budgeting and how we measure things, the recognition of key principles around global justice and equity, the focus on action in sectors such as farming and housing, and the involvement of people in designing solutions through a citizens assembly are all welcome gains. However, when I look at the enormity of the challenge that we face, the worsening scientific picture and the risks that we are taking with our children’s future, I am saddened and angry that an opportunity to deliver real transformative change has been passed up. Instead, we have a narrow piece of legislation that sets distant targets while failing to deliver the rapid, transformational and unprecedented change that the IPCC has demanded.
Even within the narrow scope of the bill, big opportunities have been missed. A statutory just transition commission should have been the centrepiece of the bill. We should have had a body with the teeth and the focus to take on the challenges of change while ensuring that no community is left behind in the transition.