SCOTTISH Greens co-leader Lorna Slater has said she “does not accept” the Scottish Government’s climate target was not achievable as she criticised ministers for not being “courageous” enough to try and reach it.
Net Zero Secretary Mairi McAllan said earlier this week the target of reducing carbon emissions by 75% by 2030 – dropped by the Government earlier this year - was “always beyond what was possible.
The scrapping of the target earlier this year sparked a rift between the SNP and Greens before former first minister Humza Yousaf ended their governing partnership days later.
McAllan told the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee: “It is not any inaction on behalf of the Government in the meantime that has necessitated the need to change this - this was always beyond what was possible.”
But speaking to the Holyrood Weekly podcast, Slater disputed McAllan’s claim saying she “did not accept the target was the problem”.
Slater agreed the target was ambitious, but insisted more action could have been taken in a bid to make it a reality.
She said: “I don’t think it’s a sensible excuse [that the target was unreachable].
“Setting an ambitious target is meant to drive action, it’s meant to make people think more ambitiously but they kind of didn’t even try.
“As the Climate Change Committee have said to us, although decarbonisation of energy has gone well in Scotland because we have so much wind energy, agriculture, transportation, industry and homes and buildings have not. There’s essentially been no progress.
“None of those things are easy to do, getting every home in Scotland upgraded, that’s a big project but it would’ve been easier if we’d started earlier. Getting people out of their cars and onto trains, that’s difficult, but it means long-term, sustained investment in trains, buses, and safe bike lanes.
“They just didn’t start soon enough nor had the vision for what a new Scotland could look like. I don’t really accept that the target was the problem, the problem was they didn’t have a vision on how to change the country and weren’t courageous enough to start having those conversations.”
Slater insisted that a “fixation” on targets had “hidden” a lack of significant action on climate change by the Scottish Government.
She believes while the Greens were in government they were having an impact on green policies, pointing to her fellow co-leader Patrick Harvie’s Heat in Buildings Bill which would introduce new laws around heating systems that can be used in homes and places of work.
But now the Bute House Agreement has ended she is worried about whether that “momentum” will stall.
“Although they were challenging when they were set, there could have been a lot more done to try and get closer” Slater added.
“That would’ve meant having some difficult conversations, things around demand management of roads, if we’re serious about reducing car kilometres by 20% which has been a Scottish Government target for a long time. There was no actual plan to achieve that.
“For so long we’ve been fixated on targets and it’s hidden the fact the Scottish Government and indeed governments around the world including the UK Government just haven’t actually taken the action needed to get there.”
McAllan told MSPs earlier this year that legally-binding plans to cut emissions by 75% by 2030 would be scrapped and replaced with a new bill.
The target of reaching net zero by 2045 remains, but tracking will instead shift to a “targeted approach based on five-yearly carbon budgets” similar to the approaches of the UK and Welsh Governments.
