Leader: Cold comfort in falling greenhouse gas emissions

Published on Tuesday 7 September 2010 17:12

Latest figures on greenhouse gas emissions in Scotland will give ample fuel for all protagonists in the climate change debate. Government officials will hail the 21 per cent reduction since 1990 as the achievement of the half-way point towards the target of a 4 per cent reduction by 2020.

Environmental campaigners will decry the evidence of a 7 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions by public organisations, including councils, the Scottish government and the NHS. And then there are the sceptics who question the validity of such statistics and who point to the fractional difference - if any - this makes to the phenomenon of man-made climate change.

Few will take issue with the caveat that little should be read into a single yearly set of figures. One evident reason for caution is that the overall reduction in greenhouse gases compared with 2007 will have been influenced by the onset of recession and the slowdown in economic activity and output. Since 2009 saw a vertiginous plunge in GDP of some 4. 6 per cent, this would suggest that significant further progress in emissions reduction will have been made that year.

Whether that is cause for congratulation is another matter. Were Scotland plunged into a full-scale Depression, the meeting of emissions targets will have drawn closer. But who could present this as a welcome stride forward? It is like cheering a higher death rate for relieving pressure on the NHS. The great danger of climate change targetitis is that it fails to distinguish between emissions reduction brought about by economic adversity and that achieved by switching to renewable energy and the advance of energy-efficient technology.

From a public policy perspective, attention will rightly focus on the 100,000 tonne increase in carbon dioxide emissions recorded by public bodies compared to 2007. Certainly "government" in all its forms has continued to grow. But here, too, the figures must be treated with caution from a policy perspective. What is always surprising in periods of extreme weather adversity is less the numbers forced to stay at home than the far greater numbers who get into their cars and make Herculean efforts to struggle into work, literally "to keep the lights burning".

However, for whatever reason, the net result of higher emissions is the opposite to the hard pounding of government on climate change politics, finger-wagging admonitions and advertising campaigns to persuade the public to change its attitudes and behaviour towards energy. Little wonder the Greens are disappointed. It always helps when government leads by example. When it fails to do so, it risks a serious loss of authority. Ironically, as the government spending cuts finally start to bite, emissions from public bodies may be expected to fall. But it is hardly an outcome that will be applauded with any warmth.