THE Greens are taking the huff because the levels of Greenness promised as part of the Bute House Agreement are being reduced.
The argument for electric cars is now well advanced as a way of reducing greenhouse gasses. This is all well and good until the batteries need replaced and the old batteries are stored while folk work out what to do with them. We know the big problem is these old batteries are inherently unstable, as a number of lithium battery fires in storage areas has revealed.
READ MORE: Patrick Harvie: I will quit as Scottish Greens leader if we bin Bute House deal
As the lithium raw material is sourced from places like Afghanistan or Central Congo, I wonder if our Green friends have considered the levels of environmental collapse, population displacement or indentured slavery which are a result of these mining operations? All before any calculation of the environmental cost of the transportation of the essential raw material to refineries and producers.
Then we will use hydrogen-powered cars whose only output is oily water, as lithium batteries do not seem to be the answer. Hydrogen is cheap to produce by electrolysis, most certainly, but I would not like a hydrogen filling station within about five miles of my house. Not only because the actual hydrogen storage site is a high risk, but when I look around at my fellow human beings putting petrol in a car, the idea of these folks handling highly reactive, pressurised hydrogen makes my skin crawl. Just because we have safe technology for hydrogen cars, that does not make them safe.
READ MORE: What could happen as Greens mull collapsing Scottish Government
Rural Scotland will remain reliant on fossil fuel cars for a good while yet, simply because of the current limited range of lithium batteries (270 miles on a good day; not using the air-conditioning) and the lack of a standard infrastructure for recharging.
All this renders the promise of no fossil fuel cars, in Scotland, after 2050 moot.
Peter Thomson
via email
SO, Scottish political focus has come off the looming Westminster election and onto matters at home. The Bute House Agreement is now the focus – should they stay or should they go is the question for the Greens, but this question could also be one for the SNP membership.
Last week’s announcement from the Scottish Government regarding climate targets did not change the ultimate target for 2045, “net zero”, it just announced the removal of interim targets.
READ MORE: Many would welcome the principled Scottish Greens leaving government
The Greens’ main political focus and the main reason for their existence is around environmental credentials. So how could the deposit return scheme under the Greens’ watch in government not be delivered? In response to no delivery the SNP did not threaten to leave the Bute House Agreement – why was that? That is because the SNP in government know the importance of having an independence majority in Holyrood, allowing the SNP in government to continue to mitigate the damaging austerity policies of Westminster.
Should the Greens decide to leave the Bute House Agreement, many who have been lifted out of poverty here in Scotland by the socially just policies of the SNP in government will be under threat from a Unionist majority at Holyrood, and that needs to be taken into consideration.
Catriona C Clark
Falkirk
I HAVE believed in Scottish independence since I was a schoolboy in the 1960s. I first joined the SNP, aged 21, in 1974.
From time to time I experience a crisis of faith. I don’t think I’ll live to see it. I don’t think anybody will live to see it. Westminster will never countenance it. Our leadership is not pursuing it with sufficient vigour ... and so on.
Right now I’m experiencing such a crisis. And yet...
READ MORE: Our Scottish independence movement is real, permanent and resolute
I will believe in my nation’s right to freedom until my last breath. I believe that, in spite of more than 300 years of Project Fear, whatever opinion polls might suggest, at any given time the majority of Scots do support independence.
That in itself is an astounding moral victory which gives me profound satisfaction.
Billy Scobie
Alexandria
I REFER to Friday’s letter by Andy Anderson which supported the criticism of the SNP I had made the previous day. It was very encouraging to receive the endorsement from such a long-term activist and campaigner such as yourself, Andy. Thank you.
I would like to finish here but have to qualify Andy’s comments regarding my support for the SNP. I did state that my vote was secure as long as Joanna Cherry was my MP and that I will be voting for her in spite of her party not because of it.
She is an excellent constituency MP and I believe the SNP would be much improved with her at the helm. She has proved her considerable expertise and potential at Westminster and continues to promote an excellent analysis of issues and a prospectus which would tackle many of the criticisms I made of the SNP, in her weekly column.
My vote for the SNP without her is much less assured.
Campbell Anderson
Edinburgh
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