The world is in a climate crisis. Never has there been a greater need for good ideas to reduce emissions here and at home. I was lucky enough to be involved in the creation of a Climate Manifesto for Stop Climate Chaos …
Fossil-fuelled vehicle phase out – SNP roll over
Rishi Sunak may have gone backwards on the environment, but the SNP have been too quick to roll over on the ban on petrol and diesel vans. Despite delaying or scrapping a number of key commitments, Sunak claims that the …
Wales forges ahead on the environment
On Sunday a default speed limit of 20 miles an hour in urban areas came into force in Wales. A public health study estimates that this will result in 40% fewer collisions every year, saving 6 to 10 lives and avoiding 1,200 …
Electric vehicles – coming quicker than you think
Electric vehicles are not the answer to all our transport woes but they are a big part of the change we need on transport, and they are coming quicker than you might think. Watch any city street and you cannot …
Climate and collective insanity
If aliens are watching our antics on climate change from afar they can surely only conclude that our species is collectively insane… Report to the Galactic Accession Committee, from the Chief Anthropologist Background – we have been observing the planet …
Air pollution progress – good but not enough
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.