Friends of the Earth Scotland’s annual round up of air pollution found that, in 2022, all the main monitoring sites in Scotland met legal standards set to protect health. This has only happened once before, when the pandemic lockdown drastically reduced …
Sailing into disaster
Despite producing as much climate pollution as the country of Germany, international shipping has largely escaped much attention in the climate debate. Most countries don’t even include these emissions in their official carbon accounts. Sending things by ship is efficient. If we …
COVID helps climate ambitions
The climate change emissions results for 2020 are out and they show that we met our target for the first time in four years. Hurrah! But only because COVID lockdowns kept emissions from cars and planes unusually low. The new figures published …
A right to clean air ?
Today is Clean Air Day, an annual opportunity to celebrate progress in making the air we breathe less bad for our health. But we are not doing that well and proposed new standards make that starkly obvious. In 2020 Scotland met …
30 years of progress, but still not enough
Today is my last day at Friends of the Earth Scotland, after 30 years in the Scottish environment movement. There has been good progress in those three decades and the environment and climate change have moved from fringe concerns to mainstream …
The next 5 years for Scotland’s environment
What did the SNP manifesto promise on climate change and the environment?
The Climate Emergency Election
This election must be about creating a green, wellbeing economy and generating the green jobs we need to transition away from fossil fuels.
Tackling traffic can help take us where we need to go
Reducing traffic can make our towns more liveable and boost climate fight.
Electric vehicles advance as part of the transport answer
End date of fossil fuelled cars is good news but our transport system much change in larger ways.
The rise and rise of electric vehicles
We're missing opportunities to phase out fossil fuelled cars.
Our Streets of Shame
Our round up of Scotland's most polluted streets shows more action on transport is needed.
Europe’s environmental crises
A hard-hitting official report reveals the depth of Europe's climate and nature crisis, and suggests much-needed ways forward.