Meeting of the Parliament 15 September 2021 (Hybrid)
Not at the moment, Mr Kerr.
We should not forget that we are talking about a licence that was first considered in 2001. Back in 2001, many still questioned the very existence of man-made climate change, but, back then, Bob the Builder’s version of “Mambo No 5” was sitting at the top of the charts. Thankfully, the world has moved on since then.
Scotland’s relationship with oil and gas goes beyond everyday reliance. It is not just the fuel that we use to heat our homes and drive our cars; communities have been built around it and livelihoods depend on it.
The industry needs to undergo a just transition, and those who work within it or who are reliant upon it deserve a just transition. They are skilled individuals and they remain absolutely critical to our success in developing the roles, businesses and industries that are needed to achieve our climate objectives. For that to happen, however, we need to see far more concerted and collaborative action by both of Scotland’s Governments to support people to reskill, retrain and move into more sustainable industries.
Too often, we see green jobs drift abroad. Without proper investment, robust planning and a just transition, many will go the same way in the future. The risk is that ministers will squander Scotland’s potential and leave communities and workers to pay the price in the move to a net zero economy. That would be a betrayal of those in the oil and gas sector.
Polling consistently shows an appetite within the workforce for making a switch but, so far, both the UK and Scottish Governments have failed to provide workers with the opportunities to change. Government support for a Scotland-wide just transition is essential if we are to avoid a repeat of the catastrophic carnage that was done to mining and steel communities in the 1970s and 1980s.
However, the creation of green jobs is only half of the equation. We still need a revolutionary overhaul in the demand for fossil fuels. Homes are still being built with gas boilers. Cars that run on petrol are still being manufactured. The vast majority of the around 2.5 million households in Scotland continue to leak heat from unsustainable systems such as gas boilers. In the meantime, sea levels are rising and the world is getting hotter.
After the sound and fury of this afternoon’s brief debate has passed, the Parliament will have to decide how it plans to honour our shared commitment—the one that we agreed unanimously not so long ago—to achieve net zero by 2045. That does call into question decisions over future oil and gas licences. It also demands a meaningful commitment by both UK and Scottish Governments to a just transition that is properly funded and properly targeted.
It is my pleasure to move amendment S6M-01193.2, to leave out from “supports” to end and insert:
“believes that, in the current circumstances, the licence for Cambo should not proceed; recognises that decisions taken over the next 10 years will either make the planet or break it; believes that every aspect of how people live needs to be sense checked in light of the climate emergency, and that this includes the oil and gas sector; notes the evidence that people in the industry would embrace new opportunities, but that both the Scottish and UK governments have failed to provide workers with the promised opportunities for green jobs, which are critical to their skills being redeployed as part of a just transition; notes the impact that this has had on communities connected to the oil and gas sector; recalls that the licence for Cambo was first considered in 2001, when the basic facts of global warming were still being regularly disputed, and believes that the climate checkpoint must be applied, given the understanding that now exists around the climate emergency and that the extraction of oil and gas cannot continue unabated.”
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