You would think that it was still all about Scotland’s oil.

Even as the world has agreed to a net zero shift in an effort to mitigate disastrous warming, when it comes to Scottish politics and independence, we are locked into the dream and chatter about oil.

The story is that we are going too fast in our shift away from fossil fuels. We could be in danger of hitting what SNP leadership hopeful Kate Forbes calls a “cliff edge”. We even find Forbes saying that she doesn’t want to throw “the oil and gas sector to the wind in a way that would jeopardise our energy security” and advocating, even at this last minute in our fossil fuel history, a sovereign wealth fund of the type we see in Norway.

Such a fund would indeed be welcome, but that oil at its centre feels like a throwback.

Or there’s fellow would-be leader Ash Regan who fired off an early declaration of her defence of the oil industry, saying, “I will not support an accelerated net zero path which sees us turn off the North Sea taps.”

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And in the backdrop we have Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), declaring a few days ago that Scotland would be £6bn GVA (gross value added) poorer under an accelerated transition, having taken its figures from the Scottish government commissioned independent report Just Transition Review of the Scottish Energy Sector, by Ernst & Young.

The oil and gas industry body observed that the report revealed that “accelerating the decline of Scotland’s oil and gas production will increase Scotland’s emissions, threaten jobs and ultimately could make Scotland poorer.”

But that’s not exactly what it said. What the Ernst & Young report highlighted is some possible scenarios in which these events could happen, but increased emissions and threatened jobs were only possibilities to strategise against. The figures OEUK has chosen are selective. In fact, what the report focusses on is a strategy in which no jobs are lost, though GVA is still nevertheless reduced.

That figure of £6 billion represents a reduction in Scotland’s GVA from £19 billion in 2019 to £13 billion in 2030, and then onto £12 billion in 2050. But what the OEUK doesn’t acknowledge is that some of that loss of GVA is already baked in, even if we weren’t to accelerate the shift.

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For there’s no papering over the truth that our domestic production is in decline, whatever decisions are made about new oil and gas exploration. Michael Mathieson, on the launch of the strategy, noted that “it will effectively end within the next twenty years if we do nothing.”

“The draft strategy,” he said, “is, in part, a consultation on whether we should act faster than this.”

The Ernst & Young report meanwhile, notes, “Understanding where and when this GVA gap will emerge provides valuable insight to guide interventions that can protect all communities through the transition.”

It also describes what it calls a balanced options scenario, in which “it should be possible to replace the jobs lost from the decline of O&G as workers join these new industries” but notes that “replacing the lost GVA will be more challenging.”

The reasons for this are revealing. “Most of the production,” the report describes, “is exported, either to the rest of the UK or globally. This means that the jobs are high value compared to the Scottish average, with an average wage of £88,000 for direct jobs, and £51,000 in the supply chain, compared to a Scottish average of £29,000.”

That’s a set of figures that made me pause – and wonder over our just transition. Are these the people Ash Regan means when she talks about defending workers and working class people in the oil industry? Who, in this transition, are we trying to protect?

I worry that, even if there are skilled people determined on net-zero transition within the oil industry, that we are still listening to this threatened, profit-driven beast too intently.

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Of course, we absolutely must create the conditions through which nobody is left behind. But should the jobs in one particular industry, really be prioritised when we are talking about something so grave as climate change? Should the voices of that industry be the ones we hear loudest?

We have got stuck in a story about oil – partly because it’s an oil and gas crisis that is making us currently suffer now. We can’t let the fossil fuel industry, in spite of its much-vaunted skills, determine the story. Our attention needs to be elsewhere - on the things we need to do to decarbonise our heating systems, transition our transport, create greater energy efficiency and develop the other energy technologies that will allow us to stop burning fossil fuels.

And it’s funny how in this leadership race, we have heard barely a peep about all that.