Most obviously, the party can speak out. Initially, Nicola Sturgeon was reluctant to do even that. When questioned by activists, she hummed and hawed. More cynical Greens speculated that she was holding back her opposition so that she could use it as a card in the ongoing negotiations with their party.
Then, yesterday, she issued a slightly clearer statement. But only slightly: she wrote to Boris Johnson, calling on him to ‘reassess’. But she didn’t make clear that he should stop the oil being burned, and was accused of hiding behind him.
In reality, she could do much more than write firmly worded letters. When the SNP first came to power, it made it clear that it would oppose any new nuclear power stations in Scotland. Officially, energy policy rests with Westminster. But planning policy is devolved. And if Sturgeon announced that she was going to amend the national plan, with a mind to barring all new oil industry infrastructure, she could gum up any new oil exploration.
Two years ago, the SNP government effectively banned fracking in Scotland using planning powers.
It’s not just Cambo. Oil yet to be extracted from the North Sea contains far more carbon than can safely be burned. And in a world where huge numbers of countries are sitting on fossilised wealth sufficient to fry the planet many times over, why on earth should we – who have contributed more of the tonnes of carbon in the atmosphere per capita than almost any other nation on earth – have the right to insist that it is ours that can be burned?
The Scottish Tories, of course, will continue to squeal – today, they’ve continued their audition to be outriders for the horsemen of the apocalypse.
But any viable response to the climate emergency has to mean a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, which means leaving the stuff under the sea. Instead, too many Scottish government policy documents prevaricate on the matter, or, worse, indulge in the ‘magical thinking’ of carbon capture and storage. Those aren’t my words. They come from the leading scientific journal, Nature.
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