Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 09 March 2021
I, too, congratulate those who have made their final speeches in the chamber today, which have been very moving indeed. I send my best wishes to the cabinet secretary, who I had hoped would be taking part today.
I have been a bit reflective, which is maybe partly to do with the wonderful speeches that we have heard from people who are leaving. As we near the end of the parliamentary session and pay tribute to those who are retiring or leaving to do other things, I have been thinking about climate change and our knowledge of it.
Climate variation has been known about since the 1700s. By the 1950s and 60s, we were aware that the behaviour of humans, fossil fuels and aerosols were playing a part in that. In the 1990s, when aerosol pollution had decreased, carbon dioxide levels were showing that, through the greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases were making global warming a real threat to the global future.
Gillian Martin mentioned David Attenborough and his extensive career and activism. He has informed us all of the impending global crisis over many decades.
As we moved from the 1990s into the new century, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was a seminal moment.
More recently, Greta Thunberg has captured the imagination of and fostered activism in our young people, who get it and do not accept it, and whose behaviour change gives an opportunity to change all our behaviour.
I thank Willie Coffey, Gillian Martin, Edward Mountain and—I am missing someone—James Dornan for their representations of their committees’ work in the area. The committees have been very diligent in their reports and in their hard work.
We are all reminded that Scotland has the most ambitious climate change legislation in the world. We have the net zero emissions target for 2045 and the interim target of a 75 per cent reduction by 2030, which was brought forward by Claudia Beamish, whom I have to commend for her dedication to the environment throughout her parliamentary career in this session. The legislation is world leading, bold, ambitious and groundbreaking.
The committees’ hard work has strengthened the climate change plan, which will see the legislation implemented. The legislation was recognised by the United Nations climate action summit in New York in 2019, when the executive secretary, Patricia Espinosa, said:
“Congratulations, Scotland, for demonstrating bold leadership on #ClimateAction ... This is an inspiring example of the level of ambition we need globally to achieve the #ParisAgreement.”
We look forward to welcoming COP26 to our country later this year.
I absolutely believe that the climate change legislation and plan are probably the most important achievements of this session of the Parliament. They could not have been achieved without the leadership and work of Roseanna Cunningham. We will look back on this moment as one when Scotland took the lead, and we will continue to take the lead in this area.
I commend all our young people for their activism, for not letting this go and for reminding us, each and every day, how important this is for our future and the future of everyone across the world.
16:59