25 Feb 2020
Few events in Glasgow’s history can match the significance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2020 due in November.
Perhaps James Watt’s moment of brilliance on Glasgow Green in 1765 might have a claim or Adam Smith’s education at the University of Glasgow, both contributions to the Industrial Revolution that set the world on a pattern of economic growth unprecedented in human history.
I joined the Glasgow team attending the formal launch of COP26 in London at which Boris Johnson acknowledged the particular responsibility the UK is taking on as host of these global negotiations.
As the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, he said, the UK has arguably the longest – though not the biggest - record of carbon emissions to offset.
We are all now becoming familiar with a flurry of government targets being set for achieving net zero emissions - 2050 for the UK, 2045 for Scotland and in Glasgow itself, 2030.
Individual businesses are responding with their own targets, with BP having perhaps one of the most difficult tasks in meeting its 2050 goal - and Microsoft being the most ambitious in aiming to be carbon negative by 2030, while stating in its January announcement that by 2050 it will have ‘removed from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975’.
Closer to home Scottish Power has made the transfer from fossil fuel generation to 100% renewable sources and has pledged to help Glasgow meet its target with its own investment in a mass electric vehicle charging system across the city.
I also met Peter Hill, CEO for the COP26 Delivery Team, and the conference now has a President in the shape of Alok Sharma, the new Secretary of State for BEIS, who has the responsibility for co-ordinating negotiations needed to persuade countries to sign up to any new accord at the Glasgow conference.
When you consider the challenge involved in securing consensus between the US, China, Australia and the rest of the world, the last thing you need is constant squabbling between UK and Scottish governments to organise the conference. Both governments have been at fault and if both are to retain the moral credibility they seek in leading the response to climate change, they must rise above our national politics and think only of the bigger picture.
The response to climate change involves one of the most fundamental debates about our economic system ever encountered.
Is the answer a deft albeit radical shift in technologies systematically phasing out, for example, internal combustion engines for electric ones or replacing gas central heating with ground source heat pumps? Or is that, as some well-known figures argue, simply insufficient?
Are we to plan instead for a future not just of net zero emissions but of net zero economic growth? Is net zero emissions sufficient or must it be pure zero with no allowances made for carbon offsetting?
The fact that Glasgow will be at the very heart of the debate, assuming that the internal governmental tussles do come to an end and the conference is not shifted to London or elsewhere in the country, no doubt means our local decisions will be minutely scrutinised.
Some will take issue, for example, with the city having an ambitious growth target for international tourism often dependent on air travel, or that the Scottish Government recently launched its new strategy for expanding exports.
Glasgow Chamber of Commerce has a very long history of arguing for free trade and international commerce. We are ready to have that debate once again.
