Climate Emergency

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 10 March 2022.

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Photo of Brian Whittle Brian Whittle Conservative

I have to be honest with the member. We blame our farmers for pollution, but that pales into insignificance when we require a land mass the size of China to produce the amount of food that we waste. We could definitely do something about that right now, instead of listening to a noisy minority.

This must be a Parliament that starts to deliver if we are to have any hope of reaching the targets for 2030 and 2045. We must give the public confidence that the changes that they face are not only necessary but have been thought through and are practical. However, Government minister Patrick Harvie has given us a pronouncement on the need to ban drive-through fast-food outlets to reduce emissions. Aside from the fact that the carbon reduction resulting from that is astonishingly marginal, I fail to see how making it harder to buy a McFlurry will encourage the public to buy into the Government’s plans to tackle climate change.

Amid all the target setting and grand pledges on climate change, we should remember that no amount of rhetoric will reduce our emissions. If making self-congratulatory statements about world-leading targets were a carbon-negative activity, Patrick Harvie and Michael Matheson would have already single-handedly decarbonised most of the developed world. We can have all the targets that we want, but the only ones that matter are the ones that have a route map to achieving them. That is what is lacking in all the Scottish Government’s crowing.