Kicking Arse

Stewart Stevenson - Climate Change Minister

On Friday I had one of those days where a week of early shifts and 4 hours sleep every night finally caught up with me. In fact, after I got home from work on Friday afternoon I can't remember much of the rest of the day at all!

So now that I've got the excuse out of the way, here's the major news that I should have commented on last Friday - the Scottish government were defeated in parliament on their CO₂ emissions targets!

If you recall, the year-old Climate Change Act calls for a 42% reduction in emissions by 2020. The government decided that the best way to achieve that was by reducing emissions this year by just 0.5%. Followed by a similar small cut next year.

Clearly ludicrous, and the parliament agreed, so the government had it's collective bottom spanked and was sent home to think again.

Unfortunately there was some wilful misreporting of the outcome, with even the BBC getting in on the act at one point. They were saying that the emissions reductions were rejected, without saying that they were rejected for being inadequate.

This led at least one blogger I read to crow about the parliament having seen through the climate change "façade" and rejecting the whole legislation.

There's not a lot can be done about how a news organisation spins a story. There is, however, a lot that can be done about reducing those CO₂ emissions and hopefully the government will finally get its head in the game.