Scotland’s badge of honour

Alex Salmond 's party has set ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions. But how will they be met?

By David Lee

If you find yourself at a function in Scotland that has anything to do with the environment, it is likely that you will have a lapel badge thrust into you hand. The natty little badge has a picture of a saltire on it, with the slogan “SCOTLAND 42% by 2020” in red underneath.

It’s a small badge, but it represents a big target. Indeed, as Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, is prone to say, it is the most ambitious target for reducing carbon emissions in the developed world.

You cannot really argue with the scale of the political ambition here - and in many ways it is out of step with rather slow policy progress in Scotland under the SNP’s minority administration.

The 2020 target (80 per cent by 2050, both using 1990 baseline data) was enshrined in law by the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill, which passed its final stage in the Scottish Parliament last June. Sceptics had urged against what were described by some as “unrealistic” targets but all parties backed the bill - 42 per cent target and all.

There was, and continues to be, a lot of back-slapping about Scotland’s lofty ambitions in agreeing these targets. Yet setting them is the easy bit; achieving them is quite different.

To give Mr Salmond credit, he was quick to realise that he had to take the Scottish public and its business community along with him. To that end, he established the 2020 Climate Group to help the Government on its way to honouring the promise on the badge.

The group is headed by Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish and Southern Energy and a leading business crusader for the green agenda. Scottish and Southern’s business rival ScottishPower is also represented by Nick Horler, its chief executive. The rest of the group reads like a Who’s Who of Scotland’s business glitterati, with big names such as Brian Souter of Stagecoach and Susan Rice of Lloyd’s Banking Group alongside the chief executives of Scottish Water and the Royal Mail.

Big names are no guarantee of success, but what they do signify is ambition - and an understanding that corporate Scotland must come along if the targets are to be hit. There are huge challenges ahead and Alex Salmond has made it clear that he has high expectations.

The signs are hopeful. Sub-groups are being established to look at the contribution that can be made by key areas such as transport and to examine how funding structures can be put in place to help deliver reductions. Another group will work with civil servants to figure out how to engage fully both the public and the business sector - this might prove to be the most important area of all.

Although it is not yet so marked as in England, the climate change backlash is starting north of the border. But the Government and its expert group must remember that there are two very distinct climate change debates going on.

The first involves the “green community” (for want of a better phrase) who accept the three basic pillars of climate change: that there is clear scientific evidence and consensus that world temperatures are increasing; that it is substantially a man-made problem; that something must be done – and fast.

This debate is about the detail, not the principle.

The second debate, in the wider world, challenges these three key principles and argues that everything is still up for discussion.

Those in camp two were given confidence by the leaked emails involving the University of East Anglia, which suggest data might have been manipulated to support the broad thesis of global warming. Parts of the mainstream media have taken up the baton of scepticism – including Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo, on BBC One’s political programme, This Week, arguing that there is sufficient academic opinion on both sides to justify real debate. They believe debate two must be resolved before we can even think about debate one.

And so the two go on – often separate from and dismissive of each other. The sceptics attack their opponents with insults and abuse, lambasting the “eco-Nazis” on the “global warming gravy train”. In turn, the sceptics are accused of being akin to the Flat Earth Society and sometimes likened to Holocaust deniers.

By dismissing the sceptics – and by allowing themselves to be characterised as dogmatists and preachers – those who accept the pillars of climate change risk losing their grip on the issue.

It is right that they continue to appeal to a sense of the greater good and to reinforce the scientific consensus behind them, but they must also meet the sceptics head-on with practical arguments.

A preoccupation with daily life is often lost in the fog of climate debate. This allows the sceptics to peddle the message that we all face certain pain here and now – in a tough economic climate – for uncertain gain in the future.

The green lobby has to start working in the here and now, or risk losing more ground to the advocates of debate two.

Alex Salmond and the expert group must show Scottish businesses firm arguments to prove they can pursue an environmental agenda and still prosper. And consumers must be given the opportunity to make their houses more energy-efficient and see the results immediately in cheaper bills, not wait years for the expensive solar panel to pay for itself.

Instead of beating the public with sustainable sticks, 2010 is the year to bring out the climate carrots. If so, the little badge might live up to its big ambition and make Scotland’s 2020 vision a reality.

20 February 2010

David Lee. Former Senior Assistant Editor of The Scotsman,