IT was a sobering report card – one that smacked of disappointment with a once-stellar pupil, who seemed now to be slacking. “In danger of becoming meaningless,” was the headline comment, on the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) report into Scotland’s progress on climate targets.

And there was worse, really, when you delved into the depths of the report and the comments around it. Chris Stark, the chief executive of the CCC, for instance, observed in the online presentation of the report, “I worry that we are now seeing the collective impacts of what you might call magical thinking in the Scottish Government”.

If most of us were honest, I think we would say this doesn’t come as a surprise. It’s relatively easy to make grand statements – to declare a “climate emergency”, or to lead the way, as Nicola Sturgeon did recently, when she announced Scotland’s loss and damages fund.

It’s much harder to create the rapid change that is required to bring emissions down at the rate required if we are going to come anything like close to limiting temperature rises to 2C, let alone the 1.5C that still lingers as a goal, though only by a thread. When it comes to climate, as Greta Thunberg might put it, the “blah blah blah” comes easily, the action less so.

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But still, the CCC’s verdict proved even gloomier reading than I might have expected. “Underlying progress in reducing emissions in Scotland has largely stalled in recent years,” the report states. “Since the Scottish Climate Change Act became law in 2009, the Scottish Government has failed to achieve 7 of the 11 legal targets.”

Plans, it told us, to decarbonise transport in Scotland are falling behind other parts of the UK. Sales of electric cars are now behind those of England, despite Scotland’s greater ambition to decarbonise transport. And all this in a year that included COP26 and the Scottish Green party sharing power in government.

On agriculture too, we are failing, with no detailed plan for low-carbon farming. Among the biggest criticism is that there is no quantified delivery plan. But there is also the complaint that the plan is also not backed by enough policy.

As CCC Carbon Budget team leader Emily Nurse put it, the overall message here is that “policy progress is not sufficient for the rapid emissions reductions that are required”.

There’s an element in Scotland’s approach that does indeed seem to mirror the positive thinking technique of intention-making – the idea that there is magic in just saying the words.

But words only get us so far. I would recommend readers watch the online presentation of the CCC report to get a feel for how off course we are:

 

The much-celebrated landmark “halving” of our emissions since 1990, was a 2020 blip, the result of a false drop created by the pandemic effect. Transport emissions have fallen a few per cent only in the past decade and will need to halve in the next decade. Buildings emissions, which have reduced by 6 per cent, need to go down by 70%.

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Though our ambitions may be indeed high, there are too many on which we are significantly off track and these include peatland restoration, reduced car kilometres, agriculture and land use and recycling rates.

On peatlands, we have been consistently missing our own targets by a long way – and these are also far below those the CCC would like to see. Meanwhile, absent from our goals is any plan to limit the growth of aviation.

Introducing the assessment, chairman of the CCC, Lord Deben, spoke of having been complimentary about Scotland in previous years. “But, I’m afraid this year we really do have to be very clear that the Scottish Government lacks a clear delivery plan. It does not give any explanation of how it can deliver the targets it has set.”

I’ll admit to having hoped that the blame might lie with Westminster. But he was having none of that. “Some of the areas where it [Scotland] is failing most,” he said, “are the areas which are entirely devolved. And it is also true that in some of the areas in which there is greater success, they are the areas which are controlled by Westminster.”

Positives? Only, perhaps that, though we are no longer leading the UK, our rank is simply the same as the Westminster government. We are not the worst student in the class. This report is a warning to us – and reminder of what’s at stake.

As Lord Deben put it: “Without the success of Scotland the UK won’t succeed and without the UK succeeding and leading then the world is not going to do what it needs to do to stave off disaster. We are in the last moments of being able to save the planet from the worst effects of climate change.” Scotland has been a leader on this key issue, and can still be – but the message is clear. Those classic two words: “Try harder”.

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