Climate change: How SNP-Tory feuding is putting real action at risk – Scotsman comment

Outgoing Climate Change Committee chief executive Chris Stark speaks of a ‘collective failure’ by the Scottish and UK governments to develop ‘a proper roadmap to net zero’

Wildfires in Canada, like this one in West Kelowna, British Columbia, burned a new record area of land last year (Picture: Darren Hull/AFP via Getty Images)

For those who still believe climate change is a problem for the future, the recent “red alert” issued by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation is the latest of many wake-up calls. Increasingly, the effects of global warming are writ large in the weather.

In a report, the WMO documented a litany of warning signs. Last year was the warmest on record; global sea levels hit new heights; Antarctic sea ice was at a record low in February; Canada’s wildfire season saw 14.9 million hectares of land go up in flames, another record and more than seven times the long-term average. Heatwaves, droughts, flooding and ferocious storms caused havoc, not least for farmers, with the number of people in acute food insecurity rising from 149 million to 333 million in little over three years.

Yet many UK politicians appear to have greeted this news with a shrug of the shoulders, before returning to politics as usual: inflation, the cost-of-living crisis, immigration, issues concerning flags, Rishi Sunak’s chances of remaining Prime Minister until the general election, the SNP’s controversial hate crime act, and so on.

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These are all issues of varying degrees of importance and similar concerns will always be present. However, disputes over such everyday politics should not disrupt efforts to tackle climate change. Yet they appear to be doing just that.

Chris Stark, outgoing chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, has now spoken of a “collective failure” by the Scottish and UK governments to develop “a proper roadmap to net zero” and the lack of a “positive, enlightened discussion” between them. “There needs to be deeper cooperation between the two governments,” he added.

This is one reason why the near-constant political warfare between Bute House and Downing Street is so damaging. The SNP’s regular cry of ‘blame Westminster’ is never going to win friends and influence in that same place.

Elected representatives need to realise that politics as usual is fine, with one exception: preventing the loss of the benign climate that has enabled humanity to thrive for thousands of years. And if they don’t, voters should act accordingly.