It’s no surprise the SNP’s climate change law has failed

When Nicola Sturgeon unveiled the SNP’s climate change pledge in 2019, the First Minister boasted that Scotland had the ‘most stretching targets in the world’. The problem was that they were too stretching: five years on, the flagship goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 has been binned.

The decision to axe the climate target means that another part of Sturgeon’s legacy lies in tatters. This debacle also reveals something simple: writing something into law doesn’t mean it will happen.

Despite talking a good game, the Scottish government has consistently missed its climate targets – it failed to achieve eight of the last 12 annual targets – and the Climate Change Committee warned that reducing emissions by three quarters in time for 2030 was now unachievable, the necessary measures being ‘beyond what is credible’.

Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, did not mince his words: ‘That is a failure of the Scottish government to bring to the Scottish people, and the Scottish parliament, a climate change plan that is fit for purpose.