GLASGOW is to host COP26 – the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change – in November next year.
I have never been a fan of the SNP’s Cabinet Secretary for Climate, Environment and Land Reform – to give her full title and the full gamut of her mind-boggling responsibilities – Roseanna Cunningham, but I must defend her against the comments made by Caroline Rance of Friends of the Earth, Scotland.
Ms Rance said: ‘If the Scottish Government doesn’t increase its targets in the Climate Bill currently going through Holyrood and get serious about cutting emissions, COP26 will expose Scotland as simply one of many rich, industrial countries failing to deliver their fair share of efforts to tackle the crisis‘.
How she arrives at such a conclusion is perplexing. Scotland, with its minuscule proportion of global emissions (the UK as a whole is responsible for only 1.2 per cent), has done more than almost any other country in the world to reduce its emissions towards net zero. Worthy or futile, that’s the fact of the matter.
Scotland could close down every airport, take every petrol and diesel vehicle off the road and close high energy using businesses and it would not make one iota of difference to global warming but would send the country’s economy into free-fall.
Ms Rance should emerge from her lucrative green bubble and go and preach in China, India, Indonesia and Russia who are ‘failing to deliver their fair share’ and are responsible for over 40 per cent of global emissions.
I am sure she would get a warm welcome and be shown to her accommodation, which she might find did not let too much sunlight in.
