Humza Yousaf is just another in a long list of politicians in various countries forced to backtrack on extravagant and disruptive so-called climate change plans. Attempts to reinvent their national electricity systems, along with numerous other energy-related interventions like mandatory electric car target dates, are proving a lot tougher to achieve than imagined when breezily announced. They all ignore the fact that nature relies on carbon dioxide to survive and grow. To paraphrase Groucho Marx: “If you don’t like our climate targets, we have others.”
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Humza Yousaf and his Green coalition partners have been mocked after insisting they were pursuing an “accelerated response to the climate emergency” by abandoning a flagship greenhouse gas target, says The Telegraph.
The First Minister admitted that his government was scrapping Nicola Sturgeon’s promise to cut Scotland’s carbon emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 after experts warned it was unachievable.
He said it would be replaced by “an accelerated climate change proposal and plan”, including a controversial measure to impose a new carbon tax on large country estates.
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said during First Minister’s Questions: “Only Humza Yousaf could believe that slamming on the brakes – because that is exactly what the SNP is doing this afternoon – is an acceleration.”
Mr Yousaf retorted that Labour had “dumped” its £28 billion green investment plan. Sir Keir Starmer announced in February, it was being cut to £15 billion per year.
But there was widespread hilarity among opposition MSPs when Ariane Burgess, a Green backbencher, asked Mr Yousaf “how the Scottish Government plans to accelerate action to ensure that Scotland achieves net zero by 2045”.
Presiding officer Alison Johnstone, Holyrood’s version of the Commons Speaker, was forced to intervene as the chamber erupted with laughter.
Màiri McAllan, the SNP’s net zero secretary, later unveiled the updated climate change plan to cut greenhouse gases, including some different targets.
She insisted the final goal of Scotland being net zero by 2045 – five years ahead of the rest of the UK – would remain. However, the Scottish Government’s annual and interim targets will also be scrapped and replaced with a system measuring emissions every five years.
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Ms Sturgeon boasted that her SNP administration was a global leader on climate change when the targets were introduced in 2019, saying they were the “most stretching” in the world.
But the UK’s official climate watchdog said last month that the current rate of progress in cutting greenhouse gases would have to be increased by a factor of nine for the 2030 target to be met.
In a report, the Climate Change Committee said this level of increase was “beyond what is credible” and was double the most “ambitious” scenario it had modelled if stringent measures were introduced.
says The Telegraph.
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Image: Photosynthesis [credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
April 19, 2024 at 08:10AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 