The Scottish National Party Can’t Be Trusted to Tackle the Climate Crisis
Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP has teamed up with the pro-independence Scottish Greens. But Sturgeon’s rhetoric on climate change has never been matched by action.
First minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon holds a media briefing with Scottish Greens coleaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater (not pictured) at Bute House on August 20, 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Jeff J. Mitchell — Pool / Getty Images)
On Friday, August 20, just over a week after the IPCC delivered its latest, chilling assessment of the state of global environmental breakdown, Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP) struck a governing deal at Holyrood, Scotland’s semiautonomous parliament in Edinburgh, with the Scottish Greens.
The deal is loosely based on the cooperation agreement signed in New Zealand last October, which handed Green legislators ministerial portfolios in Jacinda Ardern’s Labour administration without binding them to the rules of collective responsibility. As things stand, the pact is provisional: Green activists have to ratify the agreement at a special party conference at the end of this month.
Sturgeon’s motives in seeking to share power with the Greens, who sit to the left of the SNP leader on almost every issue, are not hard to fathom. The incumbent first minister fell one seat short of an outright majority at the Holyrood elections in May and wants to govern without the looming threat of a no-confidence vote in parliament.
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