Environment
Socialised power: electricity is a public good
The Scottish Government has dropped plans for a National Energy Company in favour of a watered-down advisory agency but the author says electricity should be treated as a public (common) good. The debate continues.
Scotland’s road to net zero: how far, so far?
Scotland has ambitious targets to reach net zero by 2045 and, so far, we are falling behind in the cuts to emissions needed to reach these targets…More needs to be done to improve our green…
Climate change and farming
“The prizes in terms of turning farming into a low emissions sector are significant, and necessary, to meet Scotland’s climate change targets. The challenge is to ensure food production can operate at a sufficient scale…
Energy efficiency could boost economy and jobs
A no-brainer ahead of #COP26: “The UK’s buildings account for 17% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Making them more energy efficient could cover 34% of the emission cuts needed in the sector by 2030. It would…
SNP-Scottish Greens deal: key takeaways
‘The risks are higher for the Greens than they are for the SNP. Voters are likely to see any failure of government as Green failure too. And with only two ministers, their ability to effect…
Putting energy at the centre of Scotland’s history
“..whilst natural resources from coal to oil and gas to wind and tidal have been pivotal to recent Scottish history, we have to understand them in terms of their constitutive role in human social relations.…
A very Scottish foreign policy
“Scotland should also develop its own niche areas of expertise, starting with the gamut of environmental issues related to climate change. Indeed, the aim for the coming years should be: ‘Scotland – the Green Capital…
Oor land
“And herein lies the rub with Scotland’s supposedly “radical” land reform journey. The measures so far have not transformed the big picture: some have merely dragged Scotland’s anachronistic land laws into the 20th century as…
Editorial: More ambition, Scotland!
‘We end a year of sadness and sorrow with hope that 2021 will raise the overall level of ambition in Scotland, not just in terms of defeating the virus, but of paving the way for…
Is modernism obsolete?
In the final piece of his series the author makes a stand for classicism – and sustainable buildings in green cities
Allotments make a comeback
‘The most deprived communities have faced an eight times greater loss of allotments when compared to the least deprived. This is a loss of the ability to grow food in areas where communities are most at risk…
Mythologising modernism
‘This is not the model of capitalism envisaged by Adam Smith, that beautiful smooth-running machine with its assumptions of benign reciprocity between an industrialist and a workforce. It is, rather, an unfettered Hobbesian monster, not…