I've been banging on about how unambitious the Scottish Government is when it comes to anything environmental these days, so it would be remiss of me not to comment on yesterday's rather obscene vote in the parliament.
The SNP promised in their 2007 election manifesto that if they formed the government, then they would reduce emissions by 3% every year.
Yesterday, they put an entirely underwhelming plan in front of parliament for approval - a reduction of 0% this year, followed by 0.5% next year and then 0.3% in 2012.
The Tories were always going to vote for this. The LibDems, on the other hand, were decrying the plan earlier this year. Having got into bed with the Conservatives on a UK level, they have now followed their new Overlord's lead and voted for the SNP plan.
(Incidentally, this shows a worrying lack of autonomy from the Scottish LibDems which doesn't bode well for Labour if they want to form a coalition with them next May)
As for Labour, they couldn't bring themselves to support anything the SNP touches, so they abstained, although I've no doubt they would like to see the politically-difficult targets reduced.
The fact that all four "big" parties in the parliament were willing to see these laughable emissions targets go through doesn't bode well for the future. There's a distinct lack of balls when it comes to making the big decisions needed to cut our carbon output this close to an election.
The problem, of course, is that the climate doesn't recognise an election cycle.
0 comments:
Post a Comment