6 December 2012
When will Scottish Government get its act together on climate change?
When will Scottish Government get its act together on climate change?
The Parliament’s Finance Committee is due tomorrow (Friday 7th) to issue its report on the Scottish Government’s Draft Budget 2013-14. Last year, it chose to entirely ignore the findings of the Parliament’s transport (ICI) and environment (RACCE) committees despite both making wide-ranging recommendations regarding how the Government’s budget should be redrawn to better cater for sustainable transport and reductions in climate emissions. We submitted written evidence to four Parliamentary Committees on the Budget (Finance, ICI, RACCE, EET), and we’ll be interested to see whether the Finance Committee has this year paid attention to our concerns.
The Government is also due to publish its revised climate change action plan (‘RPP2’). We’ve been very active on RPP2, mainly as part of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland’s ‘Get your Act together!’ campaign.
We were happy to have the opportunity to meet with new environment minister Paul Wheelhouse MSP to discuss RPP2. The publication of RPP2 has been delayed until the New Year, and this will be followed by a 60-day period of Parliamentary scrutiny.
The timing of the publication of RPP2 means that there will be no opportunity to scrutinise whether there is any evidence of increasing alignment between its investment priorities (the Budget) and its legal commitments to tackle climate change under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009.
The Scottish Government is already failing to meet its climate targets.
It is going to have even more problems meeting them if its spending priorities remain so skewed towards subsidising greater use of the unsustainable modes. November saw the Government announce that the cost for the proposed Aberdeen western bypass had risen from £395m to £653m. When announcing the increase, the Government had the temerity to attempt to blame Road Sense’s William Walton for the increase in cost for the scheme. The principal reason for the legal challenge was the Government’s own decision to promote a route for the road which had not been consulted upon as was formally required.
This is on top of the massive skew towards roads brought about the decision to go ahead with the construction of an unnecessary second road bridge across the Forth. The Government is now indulging in a PR puff exercise around the name of the new road bridge. We can think of a few choice names: feel free to tell the Government your own using the 'name the bridge' link to the right.