The huge missing issue in the Scottish election that may reduce us all to tears

Perhaps all of the above but, if I may attempt a Mystic Meg tribute act, this is also in the future of every politician currently spinning the “net stupid zero” line for every vote its worth – or, at least, those who hope to continue in politics beyond the point at which the realities of global warming (already a fact of life in the scientific community and the worlds of insurance, high finance and defence planning, among others) become unavoidable and obvious to even the most committed “sceptic”.

Yet climate change appears to be largely disappearing from the campaigns of the mainstream political parties. The SNP may protest, given their manifesto commitment that “Scotland will play its full part in tackling the climate and nature emergencies”.

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‘World-leading’ targets?

However, they have made such promises before and their track record invites the strong suspicion that they are paying little more than lip service to the issue, treating it as a way to attract support in aid of their over-riding aim of independence.

This has seen them set “world-leading” targets that they then do too little to achieve. In 2024, the then SNP Net Zero Secretary Mairi McAllan bowed to the inevitable and confirmed the legally binding target to reduce Scotland’s 1990 level of emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 would be scrapped.

The government, McAllan said, would make a “minor legislative amendment” to the Climate Change Act, as if it’s fine to make a law, break it and then legalise your actions. It would have been better to have not set the target and not passed the law, but instead made significant progress. Bear in mind, it became obvious the target would be missed a full six years before it was due to be met, so it was not exactly a close-run thing.

Despite this, McAllan apparently expected people to believe that the 2045 net-zero target would still be met, insisting there should be “no doubt about the seriousness that this government treats the climate and nature crises”. She obviously also deployed the SNP’s well-worn and grubby ‘get out of jail free’ card when caught red-handed: blame the UK Government! A supposed lack of funding from the accursed Westminster had forced Scotland to tackle the problem “with one hand tied behind our back”, she sniped. Aye, right.

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‘A complete waste of time’

But while party manifestos may include some of the right words about climate change, the main issue in the campaign has been whether new oil and gas licences should be issued.

This is the same debate that was wearily described, in 2024, by Chris Stark, the then chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, as “basically mostly... a complete waste of time”. “We need gas, right through to 2050 so domestic production of it makes sense, because otherwise it will be importing it,” he said, adding that without the new licences it was expected that gas production would fall by 97 per cent by 2050, and with them, it would fall by 95 per cent, so not much difference.

Stark is now a senior energy adviser to the UK Government and hopefully it is listening to such points, with a strong case for at least treating gas in a different way to oil. He is also a serious figure whose words cannot be easily dismissed by the ‘Just Stop Oil’ brigade. He exists in the complicated reality of the transition to net zero, rather than the fantasy world inhabited by the hard-left, a place filled with apparently simple solutions that would actually lead to disaster.

Tories should be pro-science

The problem is that as the passage of time demonstrates climate change is not, in fact, a “hoax” but an increasingly dangerous threat, the Scottish Greens, a party with decidedly hard-left views on economics, stands to benefit, while the stock of “net stupid zero” politicians plummets.

The Conservatives, who mostly maintained the UK’s position as a world leader on climate change while in government, have been panicked by the rise of Reform UK into echoing their rhetoric on many subjects, including this one. However, this puts them at an even greater existential risk.

The populist hard-right, meaning Reform in the UK, will always be the go-to place of choice for voters who think they can undo established science with a wave of their hand. The Trump administration’s repeated attacks on the scientific community, funding cuts, mass firings of officials, and support for spurious ideas about climate change, vaccines and diet demonstrate that.

The Tories should instead make their attitude towards science a point of difference between themselves and Reform. That doesn’t mean they have to swallow the Just Stop Oil line, far from it. Instead they need to present a sensible, economically viable, right-of-centre alternative that actually stands a chance of being achieved.

If they do not, in its absence, enough voters may decide the Greens were right about the dangers of climate change, so they should be given the chance to address it. They may think this will usher in an ecofriendly socialist paradise, but history strongly suggests the only economic system that actually works is the one we currently have – capitalism – and all others ultimately end in ruin.

It’s time to get real about climate change, treat it with the seriousness it deserves, or we may all end up in tears, no onions required.