{"id":283123,"date":"2021-08-21T09:04:17","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T09:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/08\/scottish-national-party-climate-greens-nicola-sturgeon\/"},"modified":"2021-08-21T09:05:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-21T09:05:29","slug":"the-scottish-national-party-cant-be-trusted-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/08\/21\/the-scottish-national-party-cant-be-trusted-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scottish National Party Can\u2019t Be Trusted to Tackle the Climate Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n  \n\n\n\n<h3>Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s SNP has teamed up with the pro-independence Scottish Greens. But Sturgeon\u2019s rhetoric on climate change has never been matched by action.<\/h3>\n<hr\/>\n\n<figure>\n  <img alt src=\"https:\/\/images.jacobinmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/20125229\/GettyImages-1335245459-900x599.jpg\"\/>\n  <figcaption>\n    First minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon holds a media briefing with Scottish Greens coleaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater (not pictured) at Bute House on August 20, 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Jeff J. Mitchell \u2014 Pool \/ Getty Images)\n  <\/figcaption>   \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n  \n  <p>On Friday, August 20, just over a week after the IPCC delivered its latest, chilling assessment of the state of global environmental breakdown, Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s Scottish National Party (SNP) struck a governing deal at Holyrood, Scotland\u2019s semiautonomous parliament in Edinburgh, with the Scottish Greens.<\/p>\n<p>The deal is loosely based on the cooperation agreement signed in New Zealand last October, which handed Green legislators ministerial portfolios in Jacinda Ardern\u2019s Labour administration without binding them to the rules of collective responsibility. As things stand, the pact is provisional: Green activists have to ratify the agreement at a special party conference at the end of this month.<\/p>\n<p>Sturgeon\u2019s motives in seeking to share power with the Greens, who sit to the left of the SNP leader on almost every issue, are not hard to fathom. The incumbent first minister fell one seat short of an outright majority at the Holyrood elections in May and wants to govern without the looming threat of a no-confidence vote in parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The SNP and the Greens both support a second referendum on Scottish independence: the new arrangement will bolster prospects of a fresh poll. And Sturgeon is a staunch Europhile: coalition governments are the norm in Europe, even if they are still viewed with irrational suspicion in parts of Britain.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s less clear what the Greens stand to gain from joining Sturgeon\u2019s cabinet. There will be scope for cooperation on some key areas of social and constitutional reform, including rent controls, independence, and LGBTQ rights, as well as additional funding for the decarbonization of Scotland\u2019s transport infrastructure. \u201cThere is a great deal to be optimistic about in this agreement as we commit ourselves to rapidly transitioning [away from fossil fuels],\u201d Green co-convener Patrick Harvie remarked at a press conference on Friday.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--right\"><q>The SNP has consistently failed, over the past fourteen years in office, to treat the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>At the same time, despite the IPCC\u2019s eleventh-hour warnings, in Sturgeon\u2019s SNP, Harvie and his colleagues are planning to partner up with a party that has consistently failed, over the past fourteen years in office, to treat the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves. Indeed, Sturgeon herself \u2014 a liberal technocrat with a gift for superficially radical political rhetoric \u2014 has mastered the art of environmental doublespeak, humoring the concerns of millennial climate activists one minute before extolling the benefits of extractive capitalism the next.<\/p>\n\n  \n\n    \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Climate Triangulation<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>The SNP\u2019s climate contortions have become increasingly pronounced in recent months, as the debate over Scotland\u2019s role in the fight against global warming has intensified. On the one hand, Glasgow \u2014 Scotland\u2019s largest city, and the focal point of the SNP\u2019s Central Belt support \u2014 will host the COP26 climate summit in November. John Kerry, Joe Biden\u2019s special climate envoy, is billing the event as the world\u2019s \u201clast, best chance\u201d to stave off accelerating ecological collapse.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand: Boris Johnson\u2019s Conservative government in London is considering giving the green light to a massive new oil field development eighty miles west of Shetland, in the Scottish sector of the mineral-rich North Sea. The Tories have indicated their backing for the Cambo project, while Sturgeon has hedged her bets.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--left\"><q>The Cambo North Sea oil development cannot possibly be reconciled with Scotland\u2019s climate commitments.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>The Cambo development cannot possibly be reconciled with Scotland\u2019s climate commitments. SNP politicians routinely boast about Scotland\u2019s \u201cworld-leading\u201d carbon reduction targets. In 2019, Holyrood passed the Climate Change Bill, an eye-catching piece of legislation aimed at eliminating (or offsetting) Scottish onshore emissions by 2045, five years before the UK as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>The bill represented a global \u201clandmark\u201d that would end Scotland\u2019s contribution to the climate crisis \u201cwithin a generation\u201d \u2014 or so Scottish ministers claimed at the time. Patricia Espinosa, a senior climate strategist at the UN, agreed. \u201cCongratulations, Scotland,\u201d she tweeted in September 2019. \u201cThis is an inspiring example of the level of ambition we need globally to achieve the #ParisAgreement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If it goes ahead, Cambo will singlehandedly wreck Scotland\u2019s reputation for climate leadership \u2014 although that reputation is already questionable, as Holyrood has missed its carbon targets for the last three years. The field, jointly operated by Siccar Point Energy and Shell, has the capacity to produce 800 million barrels of oil over a thirty-year lifespan.<\/p>\n<p>The current licensing agreement mandates 170 million barrels, enough to belch out more than 100 million tons of CO<sub>2<\/sub> \u2014 roughly the equivalent of running eighteen coal-fired power stations continuously for a year. In 2019, Scotland\u2019s entire domestic carbon output totaled 47.8 million metric tons.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Third Way Hand-Wringing<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>Environmental organizations are scathing about the project. Friends of the Earth Scotland called it an \u201cobscenity\u201d that would \u201cfurther damage the UK\u2019s credibility on climate action ahead of COP26.\u201d Greenpeace has threatened to take the British government \u2014 which, under the UK\u2019s lopsided distribution of constitutional powers, is formally responsible for licensing North Sea investments \u2014 to court.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Sturgeon has vacillated. On July 22, her administration published a statement insisting that, whatever the criticisms of Cambo, North Sea oil and gas had a \u201cpositive role to play in Scotland\u2019s energy transition.\u201d Three weeks later, the first minister sent an open letter to Johnson asking his government to \u201creassess\u201d its plan to authorize the development in the absence of more robust \u201cclimate compatibility checkpoints.\u201d The letter stopped short of saying production at Cambo should not commence.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--right\"><q>Sturgeon sent an open letter to Boris Johnson asking his government to \u2018reassess\u2019 its plan to authorize the development but stopped short of saying production at Cambo should not commence.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>Sturgeon\u2019s position has encountered fierce public opposition. On August 7, a group of organizers from Green New Deal Rising, a grassroots climate initiative, confronted the SNP leader at the Govanhill International Festival and Carnival, a community fair held in the heart of her constituency on the Southside of Glasgow. They urged Sturgeon to oppose Cambo on the grounds that it would exacerbate the climate crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Yet Sturgeon responded with a vintage display of Third Way hand-wringing. \u201cWe are thinking about all these things,\u201d the first minister shrugged, and \u201ctrying to come to the right decision.\u201d At the end of the day, though, Cambo was \u201cnot a matter for the Scottish government,\u201d she added. The confrontation, posted on Twitter, went viral.<\/p>\n<p>Some commentators aren\u2019t convinced that Sturgeon is as powerless to stop Cambo as she claims to be. Environmental journalist Adam Ramsay has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/en\/opendemocracyuk\/will-snp-use-its-powers-halt-exploitation-cambo-oil-field\/\">argued<\/a> that the Scottish parliament could use devolved planning law to tighten the rules governing oil industry infrastructure in Scottish waters. As Ramsay pointed out, the SNP used a similar mechanism to block the construction of new nuclear power plants in Scotland after the party first secured control of Holyrood in 2007.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Scotland\u2019s Oil<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>In truth, Sturgeon\u2019s fence-sitting over the future of Scottish fossil fuels extends beyond the disputed competencies of the Edinburgh parliament. North Sea oil and gas has been foundational to the success of Scotland\u2019s postwar nationalism. The discovery of significant mineral deposits off the coast of Aberdeenshire in the 1960s revolutionized Scottish politics. It fueled a string of electoral breakthroughs for the SNP and instantly amplified the economic appeal of Scottish independence, the party\u2019s raison d\u2019\u00eatre.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--left\"><q>North Sea oil and gas has been foundational to the success of Scotland\u2019s postwar nationalism.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>In the 1970s, the SNP\u2019s iconic \u201cIt\u2019s Scotland\u2019s Oil\u201d campaign advanced a vision of petro-fired social democracy just as Britain\u2019s industrial architecture was beginning to creak. When UK government ministers opened the North Sea up to American energy companies, Scottish nationalists pushed the case for public ownership of oil and gas assets, anchored by a Norwegian-style sovereign wealth fund.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1980s, following the defeat of the (ruthlessly gerrymandered) 1979 devolution referendum, the SNP insurgency fizzled out, and North Sea levies flowed south to London, resulting in a four-decade-long, \u00a3300 billion tax windfall for the UK Treasury. Jarringly, Margaret Thatcher used peak North Sea receipts to cut the top rate of income tax and bankroll Britain\u2019s mushrooming unemployment rates, prompted by her monetarist attacks on the country\u2019s industrial base.<\/p>\n<p>In subsequent decades, under the leadership of Alex Salmond, Sturgeon\u2019s now bitterly estranged predecessor, the SNP moved away from the statism of the 1970s and embraced an Irish-oriented model of Scottish sovereignty, rooted in independent membership of the European single market, low corporate taxes, and financial deregulation \u2014 albeit also peppered with some notable populist flourishes.<\/p>\n<p>The party continued to argue that oil and gas could fund public spending in an independent Scottish state until global commodity prices crashed in 2015. In 2017, Sturgeon was still eagerly reassuring oil executives that her government\u2019s \u201cprimary aim\u201d was to \u201cmaximize economic recovery\u201d of North Sea reserves. Oil remains one of Scotland\u2019s chief export industries, supporting up to one hundred thousand Scottish jobs.<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, the SNP removed North Sea revenues from its annual projections of Scotland\u2019s fiscal health. Then, six months ago, with the COP spotlight looming, the SNP quietly ditched its traditional commitment to maximum economic extraction, in favor of the qualified demand that future drilling projects must satisfy upgraded environmental criteria.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>The Saudi Arabia of Renewables?<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>Sturgeon\u2019s equivocation on Cambo thus reflects Scottish nationalism\u2019s formative ties to the North Sea, as well as its implicit acceptance of neoliberal economic norms. Yet the SNP\u2019s climate hypocrisy isn\u2019t restricted to oil and gas. Its triangulating instincts drive Scottish government policy on renewables, too.<\/p>\n<p>Relative to its size, and thanks to its rolling coastal geography, Scotland possesses a disproportionate share of the world\u2019s green energy potential. By some estimates, it has 25 percent of Europe\u2019s offshore wind and tidal resources and 60 percent of the UK\u2019s onshore wind capacity.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011, Alex Salmond suggested, somewhat crassly, that Scotland could become the \u201cSaudi Arabia\u201d of global green energy production. But government inaction and market-friendly procurement policies have frittered away the dream of Scotland as a green industrial powerhouse, propelled by domestic manufacturing expertise.<\/p>\n<p>The experience of BiFab, a Methil and Lewis\u2013based engineering firm, is particularly telling. Once viewed as the great white hope of Scottish offshore wind manufacturing, in late 2020, the company entered administration at the cost of four hundred high-skilled engineering jobs.<\/p>\n<p>In 2017, the Scottish government stepped in to rescue the firm, which had been commissioned to build jackets for the French-owned Neart na Gaoithe wind farm in Fife. However, when the renegotiated contract fell through, politicians in Edinburgh and London said they had exhausted all legal pathways to intervention and refused pleas for additional help.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--right\"><q>Under the SNP, foreign investment and private ownership have become the twin motors of Scotland\u2019s much-hyped but largely illusory green growth.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>BiFab isn\u2019t unique: under the SNP, foreign investment and private ownership have become the twin motors of Scotland\u2019s much-hyped but largely illusory green growth. Turbine construction for the Moray East wind farm, located off the coast of Caithness, for instance, is funded by a consortium of firms from Portugal, France, and Japan, while the turbine blades are being manufactured by a Danish company, MHI Vestas.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the fabrication yard at Machrihanish, near Campbelltown, west of Glasgow, has been left idle as its South Korean owners, CS Wind, fight a legal battle to offshore manufacturing equipment from Scottish soil. In both cases, Scottish workers have missed out on the economic benefits of Scotland\u2019s extraordinary abundance of green power.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Under the Bus<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>Sturgeon\u2019s government insists it is doing everything possible, within its limited legislative control, to ensure that Scotland\u2019s renewable resources aren\u2019t squandered in the same way the country\u2019s oil wealth was in the 1980s and \u201990s. Representatives from organized labor are not convinced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA decade on from the promise of a \u2018Saudi Arabia of renewables,\u2019 we\u2019ve been left with industrial ruins in Fife and Lewis,\u201d the GMB and Unite unions remarked in the aftermath of BiFab\u2019s collapse. The BiFab controversy exposed \u201cthe myth of Scotland\u2019s renewables revolution,\u201d they said. Two of the three BiFab yards have since been bought out: they are now owned by the London-based firm InfraStrata.<\/p>\n<p>As if to underscore the SNP\u2019s current indifference to the politics of domestic economic ownership, investigative journalists at The Ferret <a href=\"https:\/\/theferret.scot\/cambo-oil-firm-under-fire-tax-haven\/\">revealed<\/a> that the parent company of Siccar Point Energy \u2014 which maintains a controlling 70 percent stake in the Cambo field \u2014 is registered in Luxembourg. \u201cLuxembourg,\u201d the website noted, \u201cis ranked sixth-worst in the world for both tax avoidance and financial secrecy.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--left\"><q>The SNP has repeatedly pledged to overhaul Scotland\u2019s feudal patterns of land ownership, yet its proposals for reform invariably fall short of the radical change needed to democratize Scottish rural life.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>Sturgeon\u2019s government has presided over a litany of other environmental failures. Since 2007, the SNP has repeatedly pledged to overhaul Scotland\u2019s feudal patterns of land ownership: fewer than five hundred people own half the country\u2019s nonpublic landmass. Yet its proposals for reform invariably fall short of the radical change activists say is needed to democratize Scottish rural life. The SNP\u2013Green shared policy document, published on Friday, said they would introduce a new land reform bill to Holyrood before the end of 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Last summer, Sturgeon appointed Benny Higgins, a private-sector banker, to chart Scotland\u2019s fiscal recovery from COVID-19. His first act in his new role was to launch an unprovoked attack on climate campaigners, whom Higgins denounced as \u201cideological zealots\u201d determined to \u201cthrow economic growth under the bus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In February, SNP ministers granted the British royal family \u2014 which owns vast tracts of Scottish land as a matter of hereditary right \u2014 an exemption from new energy efficiency rules the party had otherwise insisted were necessary to cut Scottish carbon emissions. Freedom of Information requests later revealed that the Palace had secretly lobbied the Scottish government for the exemption \u2014 and that the latter had facilitated it without disclosing the lobbying to parliament.<\/p>\n<p>This is the administration the young, combative, anti-capitalist Scottish Greens are on the brink of joining. Assuming that the governing deal is ratified, one of two outcomes await. Either Green MSPs will push Sturgeon into embracing ever more ambitious positions on the climate without being absorbed into the vitiating machinery of her government, or they will provide PR cover for the SNP\u2019s ineffectual climate gradualism \u2014 and end up paying a heavy political price at future elections.<\/p>\n<p>Sturgeon\u2019s evasiveness over Cambo is unsettling for a number of reasons, but chiefly because the nationalist leader isn\u2019t a climate denier. She understands the science of global warming and, on some level, knows that the development must not and cannot go ahead. The success of the Greens over the coming months will be measured by their ability to resolve the SNP\u2019s climate dissonance.<\/p>\n\n        \n           \n    \n\n   \n  <hr\/>\n  \n\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/08\/scottish-national-party-climate-greens-nicola-sturgeon\/\">Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, August 20, just over a week after the IPCC delivered its latest, chilling assessment of the state of global environmental breakdown, Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s Scottish National Party (SNP) struck a governing deal at Holyrood, Scotland\u2019s semiautonomous parliament in Edinburgh, with the Scottish Greens. The deal is loosely based on the cooperation agreement signed in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283124,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283123\/revisions\/283124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}