Hansard

I will come on to speak about some of the actions. The cabinet secretary has already mentioned those plans.

Last year saw the hottest temperatures that Scotland has ever recorded. It was a staggering 35.1°C in Kelso. Unfortunately, as Beatrice Wishart mentioned, it is now looking extremely likely that we will pass the 1.5°C marker in the early 2030s. However, knowing that we are likely to pass the marker does not mean that we should give up. We must be wary of an “It’s going to happen anyway, so there’s nothing I can do” attitude. Many people will adopt that pessimistic way of thinking, because it is the easiest approach in the short term, but doing so would continue to condemn everything we know. As Sir David Attenborough put it,

“What humans do over the next 50 years will determine the fate of all life on the planet.”

If we reach 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the risk to human life is much higher. Diseases such as malaria will spread much more quickly, food security will be volatile at best, and economies across the world will suffer greatly, pushing yet more people into poverty.

My constituency was home to the 26th UN climate change conference of the parties—COP26. Nations from across the world met and agreed on statements around reducing carbon to net zero, achieving a just transition to greener energy and protecting nature. No one nation can do it alone, but we can do our bit here, at home.

Glasgow City Council agreed that 2030 should be the target for bringing the city to net zero carbon emissions. That is no mean feat, because our nation’s largest city is home to many great and varied industries, and hundreds of thousands of people commute into Glasgow on any given working day. Most arrive by car—recent figures show that nearly 70 per cent of people travel to work by car or van, as either the driver or a passenger.

Glasgow City Council has done and is doing much work to change people’s attitudes and behaviour when it comes to moving around the city. We hear a lot about modal shift, whether that be moving people on to public forms of transport, such as our rail, bus and subway networks, or encouraging people to take a more active travel path by walking or cycling to work.

As of June, Glasgow City Council will be enforcing a low-emission zone throughout much of the city, the chief aim of which is to reduce extremely dangerous levels of air pollution. Unfortunately, two of the highest recorded levels have been in my constituency of Glasgow Kelvin. I have no doubt that the LEZ will encourage some to consider taking other modes of transport into the city, thereby helping us to reduce our commuter carbon footprint.

However—I say this as an ardent supporter of any measures to tackle the human impact of climate change—we must accept that, for many people, a car will remain the most appropriate mode of transport for getting to work. Those people include people with mobility issues and people who live in rural areas.

Cars are and will remain a major presence on our road networks for some time to come, and we need to get even more creative about how we manage and reduce the impact that they have on our environment. A move to electric vehicles is an obvious answer but, currently, they are too pricey for many people. Incentivising car-sharing schemes might alleviate the need for multiple cars to make the same or similar journeys. That is part of the answer to Glasgow reaching net zero by 2030, but it is only part of the answer. Home energy retrofitting, district heating, decarbonising industry, moving to hydrogen or electric transport and protecting and growing natural solutions for carbon sequestration all have a major part to play in Glasgow’s journey to net zero.

I put on record my thanks to and appreciation of our hard-working councillors in Glasgow—particularly Councillor Angus Millar, who chairs the climate, Glasgow green deal, transport and city centre recovery committee. Councillor Millar and his colleagues are very much alive to the challenges that we have before us as we seek to meet the 2030 target, but they have shown a determination to get the work done. However, that work comes with a very high financial burden. To date, central Government has put its money where its mouth is, but much more will be needed if we are to reach our 2030 targets.

As I understand it, there are opportunities to tap into alternative finance options but there are not the appropriate structures in place to enable local government to procure what it needs, at a fast pace, in order to meet timescale demands. I would be grateful if the minister, in summing up the debate, could say more about what work the Government is doing to free up councils to work more flexibly with external partners to reach their climate goals.

It is a no-brainer. Last year, parts of the UK were literally on fire. Let us not weather this storm; let us beat it.