Last autumn, my elderly gas central heating boiler – a sturdy veteran of 42 years’ service – finally gave up the ghost. I mourned, but then tried to look on the bright side; at least, I thought, I could join the green revolution, wean myself off fossil fuels, and set myself up for a renewables-powered electric future.

It quickly became clear, though, that I thought wrong. To my astonishment, it seemed that although I might, subject to conditions, be entitled to help in paying for a new gas boiler, there was simply no scheme available to encourage any transition away from gas, either via heat pumps – completely irrelevant to tenement flats, it seemed – or via electric heating systems.

Worse, I soon learned that decades into the current climate crisis, it was still, on average, three or four times more expensive to run a domestic electric heating boiler than a gas boiler. I complained about this on Twitter; Patrick Harvie, one of Scotland’s two Green ministers, replied that UK energy pricing is entirely in the hands of the Westminster government, who have arranged it so.

I could, of course, have entered into a debate with the minister about whether the Scottish Government should use some of its existing powers to mitigate this ridiculous system, by creating its own incentives to change fuels; but I had decisions to make, if I wanted to avoid a winter without heating. So I ordered a super-efficient new gas boiler; and the man who installed it confused matters further by telling me not to worry, as it would probably soon be powered by green hydrogen anyway.

All of which simply serves to demonstrate what is already obvious; that policy on the transition to a low-carbon economy is a mess, at both Scottish and UK levels, and that even seriously concerned citizens are often at a loss as to how to pursue that goal, in a society that offers no legible route-map out of the current climate nightmare.

That that nightmare is real is ever more evident. This summer’s tourist horror on the islands of Rhodes and Corfu has been a climate disaster waiting to happen for a decade now; and the wild post-pandemic rush of north Europeans back to their old Mediterranean summer haunts cannot hold back the flames, as once beautiful and prized landscapes dry out in sustained 40-degree heat, and gradually – or sometimes suddenly – become dangerous and frightening to live in. And although we push these truths to the backs of our minds in everyday life, we are aware of them; and, I think, increasingly troubled and frightened by the absence of any credible plan to deal with them.

Scan the horizon of UK politics for a leader or party that seems to offer real hope on this front, though, and you will scan in vain. Caroline Lucas of the Green party stands out as a beacon of coherence and common sense, but will step down as an MP at the next election. Ed Miliband, Labour’s impressively well-informed climate change spokesman, stands by almost silent, while Keir Starmer backtracks or equivocates on one green policy after another.

The Conservative front bench has become a serial joke on these matters, one minute claiming “global leadership” on climate change, the next joining the most pathetic far-right culture wars against anyone “woke” or “elite” enough actually to implement any climate policies. And last week, to the despair of climate campaigners, both main UK parties jumped shamefully on the Uxbridge by-election result to argue that a majority of voters there hated the idea of London’s ultra-low emission zone; when in fact the voting figures suggested a clear majority in favour, impotently divided among several parties.

Finally, it would be good to be able to argue that things are better in Scotland; but in truth, the presence of the Scottish Greens in government, since 2021, has been so badly handled in terms of both policy and presentation that it actually seems to be making matters worse. In party terms, it has enabled a small but noisy reactionary minority in the SNP to distance themselves from all climate-related policies, blaming them entirely, if ridiculously, on the “green tail wagging the yellow dog”.

And in terms of policy and presentation, it has reduced the Greens in government to piping on forlornly about the fragmented detail of this green policy or that – the bottle recycling scheme, the highly protected marine areas, and now Patrick Harvie’s ill-timed comments on phasing out gas boilers – in ways that seem designed to provoke maximum instant opposition to each individual measure. Above all, no one takes on the crucial leadership role of demonstrating, week in and week out, how those measures can form part of a wider plan, with strong grassroots support, to bring Scotland, with all its immense potential in this area, out of these years of climate nightmare, and into a leading role in creating a more sustainable future.

In that sense – as so often with Labour and the SNP – Keir Starmer and Humza Yousaf seem like two sides of the same coin; progressive in intention, but unable to muster a 21st-century narrative – green, social-democratic and progressive – strong and coherent enough to face down the destructive barrage of right-wing noise that now shapes day-to-day UK politics. Across the western world, now, voters can far too often feel that same aching void where real, joined-up, next-generation leadership to take us away from this crisis should be.

And nowhere is that absence more keenly felt than in the UK, where the leader of the main opposition party, in a time when progressive change is so desperately needed, can be blown clean off course by a single badly interpreted by-election result; and the task of saving the planet almost always looms less large, in the minds of leaders, than the state of the next morning’s headlines.

Keir Starmer and Humza Yousaf must find a way to face down right-wing climate sceptics – Joyce McMillan

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