ugly graffiti on the city walls. Hotel rooms of hundreds of euros per night and therefore unaffordable for representatives from poorer countries. Threats from strikes, overflowing dumpsters, a plague of rats. The rats would even in the apartment building of Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon have been found.
The preparations of Glasgow in Scotland for the international climate summit were difficult and the question was until Sunday, the official start of the summit, whether the city was ready. But the train crew has a salary increase got and the garbage collectors have also suspended their strike plans with a new wage offer in their pockets. Glasgow residents can get a place to sleep at their home for a few bucks a night offer.
“This kind of tension is inevitable at events of this magnitude,” Scottish Prime Minister Sturgeon said in an online interview with European journalists ahead of the COP26 climate summit. “But ultimately the most important thing is the political outcome of the summit.”
The strikes may be over, but there will still be plenty of demonstrations in Glasgow out of dissatisfaction with the progress at the summit. Do you understand those frustrations?
“Yes, I strongly share those sentiments. We start this summit with a huge gap between what world leaders have pledged and what it takes to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It’s easy to overstate the importance of these kinds of events, but what really matters is the future of our planet, the future that young people of today may or may not have. I think this might be the most important gathering of my life anyway.”
Officially, the Scottish government and Nicola Sturgeon have no role at the summit and the organization is in the hands of the United Kingdom. And relations between Sturgeon’s nationalist Scottish National Party and the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson are not very good. But, says Sturgeon, she doesn’t want to “let petty differences of opinion stand in the way of the success of this summit.”
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However, there are clearly mutual annoyances. It is not for nothing that the Scottish government, for example, has slightly higher goals than Johnson in terms of climate. The United Kingdom wants a climate neutral society by 2050, the Scots aim for 2045.
How credible do you find Boris Johnson’s sudden green ambitions in the run-up to this summit?
“The UK government has only recently presented its strategy and its ambitions are good. We could go a little faster here in Scotland, partly because we have a lot of forest and peatlands where we may have a lot of CO2 can store in. And we also look at technological forms of storage. I have to say that we disagree with the British government on that, because they don’t want to prioritize those storage projects. And last week they came up with their new budget and it raised a lot of questions. This will reduce the tax on domestic flights. I don’t think they live up to their emissions reduction commitments financially because of those kinds of decisions.”
And soon there will probably be a green light to start drilling in the Cambo oil field, near Shetland. Is that also damaging for Scotland?
“That’s another difference of opinion between me and Boris Johnson. I don’t think Cambo should go ahead unless the plans pass a very strict climate test. Boris Johnson does not think such a thing is necessary because there is already a permit. Rhetoric very quickly is just that, rhetoric, if your actions don’t support your words. I think leaders should be more aware of that.”
When do you think Scotland can get rid of oil and gas? Many Scots depend on this sector for their income.
“We are now about halfway through, or just over, on our way to being climate neutral. This makes Scotland one of the best performing countries in the world. I’m not putting years or months on it, but the movement is clearly moving away from fossil fuels. The point is that we should not suddenly start importing oil or gas, because we have scaled down our own activities but have not really tackled our dependence on oil and gas. And we need to make sure that those tens of thousands of Scots who work in the sector also get good other jobs. We have to do that quickly, but fair and with an eye for those people. Our party has campaigned for decades on the great importance of oil to Scottish society, so it’s quite something for me to say.”
Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP won parliamentary elections in May by force majeure, including the promise of a new referendum for independence from Scotland now that the United Kingdom has left the European Union. Therein lies the core of the tensions between her and Johnson: she wants to hold that referendum by 2023 at the latest, he is against it.
Will you leave the debate on the referendum for a while until after this summit?
“Our plan is still to hold the referendum in the first half of our term in office, i.e. before the end of 2023. The corona crisis and this summit have demanded a lot of our attention and they should, but our intention stands.”
And what will you do if Boris Johnson opposes it?
“Look, we are going to arrange the mandate for a referendum through our parliament. So the question will soon be: is Boris Johnson for or against a democratically taken decision? If he wants to stop our legislation, he will have to go through the courts. The ball is in his court, not mine.”
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After all, isn’t such a big issue as climate change much more important than independence?
“I think that’s absurd. It is very damaging to our interests that we are not independent. As a result, we now, for example, do not have our own seat at the table at the COP26. Thanks to Brexit, which a majority of our population voted against, we have lost our freedom of travel within the European Union. That makes it more difficult to find people for healthcare. We have shortages in our supermarkets due to rumblings in the supply chain. All the negative consequences of Brexit come as no surprise, they were predicted, but now that we are really experiencing them and are in the middle of it, the frustration is growing.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of November 1, 2021
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source https://pledgetimes.com/scottish-prime-minister-sturgeon-wants-to-go-a-little-faster-than-the-uk-with-the-climate/
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