Thirteen years ago, on this day, October 19th, 2011,
On 19th October, 2011, the Government terminated negotiations with the ScottishPower consortium as the Government considered it could not agree a deal that would represent value for money (NAO, 2012). The first CCS competition ended without any winner.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that BP had been interested in using CCS on one of its projects in 2005. proposed it. They pulled the plug in 2007, because Treasury wouldn’t comply. Then a CCS competition had been established in November 2007, Gordon Brown launched it at a WWF event. And the idea was it would be up and running within a couple of years. Ha ha. The competition dragged on and dragged on and dragged on, eventually whittled down to only one interested company. And they’d only been doing it because they were going to be given loads of money to keep the stranded assets afloat. And even then, that didn’t come off. But a second competition was already waiting in the wings.
What we learn is that CCS has a long, long history of failure in the UK, of broken promises of delayed and then ended schemes. Hopefully by now I can point to my book?
What happened next was that a second competition was set up as was the UKCCS Research Centre, some money for workshops and networking and so forth. And then the competition came undone in November 2015… And then, well, you should buy my book!!
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
On this day, June 24th, in 2009, the Scottish parliament unanimously passed the Climate Change (Scotland) Act. This enabled the devolved Scottish government, led by the Scottish National Party’s minority administration, to look slightly more progressive than the UK New Labour government at Westminster. This government, then led by Gordon Brown, had passed the Climate Change Act for the whole of the UK in 2008.
Some provisions in the Scottish Act went further than the UK legislation; for example a slightly higher emission reduction target for 2020. This was the result of a parliamentary bidding war (a 42% target reduction in Scotland, compared to 34% for the UK as a whole). Also, there were to be annual targets to sit within 5 year carbon budget periods (the UK Act didn’t have those annual targets).
Sarah Louise Nash has written extensively in the academic journal Environmental Politics about the alliances that were formed in Scotland to shape the Act during a period of increased activist and media attention to climate change (paywall). A key factor was the desire for Scotland to be able to position itself as a global leader at the COP19 summit held in Copenhagen later in 2009, which ended famously in acrimonious failure.
In 2019, during the latest wave of enhanced activist and media concern about the worsening climate crisis, the Climate Change (Scotland) Act was amended to set more stringent emission reduction targets. The UK Government had just altered its legislation to set a net zero target for 2050 (up from an 80% reduction target). Scotland again followed suit and positioned itself as slightly more ambitious by proposing net zero by 2045, with interim targets for 2030 and 2040. The Scottish Green Party abstained on the Bill that introduced the new targets, arguing that an 80% reduction target by 2030 is needed, instead of the Bill’s 75% target (increased from the SNP’s proposed 70%).
Just like in 2009, 2019’s legislative change came before an important global summit that failed to meet inflated expectations. COP26, scheduled to be held in Glasgow in 2020, and delayed due to Covid until 2021, involved Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon trying, with limited success, to get on stage to position Scotland as a world leader, as cringy selfies showcased by the Murdoch Press (Sunday Times) help make apparent.
Nicola Sturgeon poses in red with various leaders at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021.
The lesson to take from this history is that, despite bidding wars for the status of virtue and global leadership on climate change that help to increase legislative ambition, the numbers still fail to add up when the baseline for ‘leadership’ is so disastrously low.
Dr Robbie Watt is an academic at University of Manchester, a core group member of Climate Emergency Manchester and an all-round lovely bloke. He has another guest post on All Our Yesterdays, here.
On this day in 2007 perhaps a hundred people attended a climate action gathering in central Edinburgh, Scotland. At that time I was a student in Glasgow, so I travelled over for the event, along with some friends. Rising Tide Scotland coordinated the day, which involved workshops, plenaries, and film screenings.
My memories are hazy and there is very little information about the event that remains online. Nevertheless I can tell you about some recollected snippets from the day, and I can put the event in some context.
The context of Scottish climate activism in 2007
March 2007 was a period of significant concern about climate change in the UK. The 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (physical science basis) was released with stark warnings in February 2007. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documentary had made some impact in 2006. Public concern was growing and the UN Kyoto Protocol’s flaws were becoming more obvious.
We had not yet been hit by the global financial crisis which shifted public attention elsewhere (Northern Rock collapsed in September 2007). Nor had we yet been demoralised by the intense failure of the 2009 UN climate talks in Copenhagen (COP15).
The organisers of this gathering, Rising Tide Scotland, were involved in Climate Camp, which promoted actions of civil disobedience at sites of major polluting infrastructure, including Drax coal fired power station (August 2006) and Heathrow airport (August 2007).
Rising Tide Scotland, among others, sought to build climate activism from among the Scottish anti-war and alter-globalisation left that had mobilised against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and against the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005.
In parallel, electoral strategies by the Scottish Green Party and the Scottish Socialist Party had led to significant representation in the devolved Scottish Parliament in 2003, albeit this ebbed away for the Greens in the May 2007 election and ended disastrously for the Socialists, who had been split by the ongoing Tommy Sheridan debacle.
Memories of the climate action gathering, March 17th 2007
These are hazy and partial, so if others have better recollections, perhaps they could leave a reply in the comments. I remember being excited about the day. There is a desire to learn, engage and connect, which activist groups should always be able to tap into.
The event took place in the premises connected to the Forest Cafe, which was then housed in an amazing, centrally located listed building that was a hub for arts and events, supported by volunteers and not-for-profit initiatives. This lasted until 2011, when the building was sold after the charitable owners went bankrupt. The Forest moved to a much smaller premises in 2012. I arrived early and had a coffee (vegan milk only).
In the workshops, I vaguely remember learning about some things I already knew, and hearing some things that I was not aware of. There were some interactive elements, including a memorable use of a ‘strength line’ in a breakout session. This involved people physically moving closer to one side of a room or another, depending on how much they agreed or disagreed with a proposition for debate. People could move during the debate, so you could see how it was going. One of the discussions was about technology, and at that time I was pretty sceptical about technological solutions, so I raised my hand to speak. I said something about technology getting us into this climate change problem and therefore not expecting technology to get us out of it, and found to my surprise that more people had moved away from my favoured position and towards the opposite!
I remember another workshop introducing people to non-violent direct action (NVDA), led by someone who was advocating this approach. For some reason – probably because I was learning analytical philosophy in my first year of university – I decided to quibble with the speaker in the Q&A about whether destruction of property could be considered violent. I think he had in mind destruction of polluting corporate infrastructure, and I had in mind personal property, so we ended up speaking at cross-purposes.
Aside from that, I remember seeing some familiar faces, and lots of unfamiliar faces. To my surprise, one of my philosophy lecturers, Prof Alan Carter, a specialist in environmental ethics, spoke with the microphone from among the rows in one of the gatherings. I suppose this confirmed to me that I was somehow in the right place, even if I was not yet much good at debating. It’s just very disappointing that the climate crisis has become so much worse since then.
