Extinction Rebellion: Scottish Parliament sticks to 2045 climate change target, defying protesters

Scotland’s target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions will be set at 2045, despite the presence of Extinction Rebellion protesters at Holyrood who want the target to be dramatically brought forward to 2025.

MSPs voted for the date recommended by the independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) as they met yesterday to rule on 151 amendments to the Scottish Government’s Climate Change Bill. A bid by Scottish Green MSP Mark Ruskell to shift the date to 2042 also failed, as did an attempt by Scottish Labour’s Claudia Beamish to set an interim target of reducing emissions by 66 per cent by 2030. Environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham told MSPs the 2045 date was recommended by the expert CCC group and would see Scotland reach net zero emissions five years earlier than the rest of the UK.

She said the 2045 target relied on the UK government also setting a net zero target for 2050, and that a move to set it at 2042 would be against expert advice that 2045 is the “highest possible target”.

Extinction Rebellion protestors glued themselves to sites around the Parliament building at Holyrood

The bill is currently at stage two of the legislative process, which brings it under intense scrutiny by the Scottish Parliament’s environmental committee. It is also the reason for Extinction Rebellion Scotland’s camp outside parliament and its disruption of traffic in Edinburgh’s city centre.

Yesterday the protesters made a “human chain” around the Holyrood building to raise awareness of their demands and said their Holyrood Rebel Camp was their “biggest ever gathering”. The group plans to remain on the site for the next five days, having called on the Scottish Government to do more in response to the “climate crisis and ecological breakdown”.

In committee Mr Ruskell said his move to bring the target forward by three years was to give “absolute clarity” to the bill. However, Ms Cunningham said the Government was committed to net zero emissions by 2045 and she was backed by six votes to one.

However, Scottish Greens’ demands for closer climate scrutiny of future government budgets were backed by the minister. Mr Ruskell said: “Greens have already won a commitment to increase the share of spending on low carbon projects in Scottish budgets, but we need that to scale up massively in the years ahead and cut spending on actions that wreck the climate. It’s right that such a commitment should now go into law through the new Climate Bill and it’s welcome that the environment secretary backed Greens’ calls today to make that happen.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat energy spokesperson Liam McArthur also secured amendments to the bill to ensure the additional impact of aviation emissions at high altitudes could have on global warming was taken into account when calculating Scotland’s future emissions output. He said: “Tackling aviation emissions will be key to achieving our climate change ambitions.”