THE SNP conference has backed the recommendations from the citizens Climate Assembly report but agreed that the “full powers of independence” are needed to tackle the crisis.
Party members voted overwhelmingly to pass the motion Walking the walk on climate change on Saturday by 502 votes in favour, with 5 against.
Chris Hanlon, SNP policy development convener, was the first to speak in favour of the motion and laid out how the Climate Assembly report came to agree on 16 goals and 81 recommendations on how Scotland can tackle climate change.
The report, published on June 23, 2021, consists of a long list of recommendations covering areas from public transport, education, land use, carbon labelling of food, taxation and 20-minute communities.
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The resolution read: “Conference therefore enthusiastically supports the recommendations of the report and adopts a good faith effort to implement them as party policy, recognising that we can still make progress under the limited powers of devolution with innovation and determination, but that Scotland needs the full powers of independence to make the required transformational changes”.
Hanlon said that the report was a “strong consensus” of the “absolute minimum level of intervention that they expected their government to make in response to the challenge ahead”.
He said: “The time for talk is over, pretty words and a veneer of commitment to action is not going to save us when the water comes up over our bottom lips. The climate assembly published a report a couple of months ago that set out 16 goals and made 81 recommendations.
“None of which were optional, many of them are extraordinarily ambitious, some will be very inconvenient or costly, but the consensus of the assembly members was that all were absolutely necessary steps as an absolute bare minimum to avoid an ecological catastrophe, the cost and inconvenience of which would make that of the recommendations themselves pale into insignificance by comparison.
Our full report with 81 recommendations for action from our Assembly members is now LIVE. Click the link below, and keep an eye on our social platforms today where we'll be sharing the recommendations! https://t.co/NIwpKZo27M #ScotClimateAssembly #ClimateChange pic.twitter.com/JpdUPCFu6D
— Scotland's Climate Assembly (@ScotClimateCA) June 24, 2021
“A representative sample of the sovereign people of Scotland looked at all the evidence, weighed up our options and gave us our marching orders.”
Hanlon added that it was time for Scotland to “put our money where our mouths are” and tell the rest of the world to “get with the programme”.
He also pointed out that countries that take the lead on climate change will likely be the first to see economic benefits.
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He added: “The reality is there is no alternative, the climate emergency is an existential threat to human civilisation, maybe even to the existence of our species itself. There will be no second place, we will do what needs to be done or we will cease to exist.”
Kairin van Sweeden, a climate justice activist who is currently a plaintiff in a court case against the UK government, backed the resolution.
Van Sweeden backed the resolution during Saturday's SNP conference
She said that it was “incredibly heartening” that the over 100 members of the citizens assembly felt the same way as she does about climate change, adding that there was “broad agreement” there has to be action at “government level, council level and personal level”. Van Sweeden said: “Some of the strongest and most coherent thinking came from the youngest in our community, that is the children’s parliament.
“Scotland’s climate assembly and the recent resounding vote in favour of working with the Greens clearly demonstrates a clear public appetite for all of us to steward our beautiful country together and in turn helps steward the global commons.”
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Ian Gallagher, a member of the Bearsden branch, said that COP26 may be “our last chance to save our planet” and that the Climate Assembly had set out a road map.
Gallagher added that Greta Thurnburg had warned that if the world doesn’t act it will steal the “future of our young people and our generations”.
He said: “We owe it to them to stop with the empty words and the half measures, we must act now before the climate apocalypse arrives and I do realise that there are some saying it is already here, but we still have time.”
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