No wonder former head of Scottish Greens tore up membership card

Some months ago, I spent an afternoon in the kitchen of former Scottish Green party leader Robin Harper at his flat in Edinburgh.

While I was there, Robin – now a sprightly 83 years old – wanted to show me his latest gadget; a new air fryer he and his wife, Jenny, had bought. He was buzzing with pleasure.

With just the two of them in the flat, it was the perfect size to cook small meals.

And, he added, given they were no longer using their gas hob, it meant they were cutting back on their emissions to boot.

Everyday, practical steps to reduce the carbon we emit into the atmosphere – and save us all on our bills in the process – should be the calling card of today’s Green movement.

Former Scottish Greens leader Robin Harper looked on in despair at the way the party has been led by successors Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater

Challenges

It’s what still fires up Mr Harper, a life-long environmentalist who sends off daily emails and letters urging action on this greatest of human challenges.

It is, however, no longer what the Green movement in Scotland is about.

Culture wars – not common progress – have become its watchword.

Ideological purity tests are more important than environmental goals.

The Green agenda in Scotland has been hijacked since Mr Harper’s time in charge.

It is this little bit of the planet that’s suffering.

Mr Harper’s verdict on the Green movement will, I suspect, mirror that of many others.

A lifelong member of the Scottish Green party, he tore up his membership card last year in despair at the way it was being led by his successors Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater.

He, like many of us, has watched on in bemusement as a party and a movement designed to promote the cause of environmentalism has instead set out to split the country into heretics and believers – and often over issues that have no relevance to the planet whatsoever.

Firstly, it happened with independence when, according to Scottish Green dogma, the cause of the planet became contingent on the creation of a border between Gretna and Berwick-upon-Tweed.

More overtly in recent years, the Green cause diverted itself into the great national frenzy over gender ideology, again for no obvious environmental purpose.

The juxtaposition has now become a full-blown cognitive assault.

On the planet, Mr Harvie tells us we should stand by ‘the evidence’ and follow ‘the science’ on climate change.

And amen to that.

On gender and independence, however, we’re just supposed to believe.

Last week, Hilary Cass’s detailed review into gender services concluded there was ‘remarkably weak evidence’ behind treatments such as puberty blockers.

Yet Mr Harvie refuses to give the findings his support.

The man of science suddenly comes across like a Victorian bishop denying Darwinism.

There is logic, however, and it’s on the brute politics.

The Scottish Greens know their nationalist position will see pro-independence supporters voting for them tactically on the second ‘list’ vote at Holyrood.

Meanwhile, their position on gender rights also helps to signal their ultra-progressive credentials.

That’s their choice, but the tragic upshot is that the great unifying cause of environmentalism has now been tarred with what has become a deeply divisive brush.

No wonder middle Scotland is switching off from doing their bit.

This divisive approach has had real-life consequences.

As with their friends in the SNP, the Scottish Greens have in government been theologically averse to working as part of a wider UK team effort – which is essential to dealing with Scotland’s carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, talk has become more important than action.

As Chris Stark, the out-going chief executive of the Climate Change Committee declared last week: ‘My strongest criticism of what the Scottish Government’s done recently is that we’ve only had statements rather than proper plans and actions out in place.

‘It’s the plans and actions that matter in the end… there’s a convenience to blaming the UK Government when most of the policy issues now sit with Holyrood.’

We are left with the national embarrassment that was last week’s decision by the SNP-Green government to scrap Scotland’s 2030 emissions target.

Failure

The Greens and the SNP are not known for their humility and self-awareness.

But perhaps ten years of failure and broken promises might now lead to a shift in approach that the likes of Mr Harper and others like me would be happy to support.

It would require something which often seems alien to Holyrood: a compromise with reality.

For example, reality dictates that if we want to avoid civil war and the breakdown of modern society as we know it, we will still need oil and gas for some decades to come.

Ordinary people who acknowledge this are not climate-change denying Trumpians.

It is just a basic observation of facts. It is something SNP and Green ministers might want to acknowledge.

Rather than over-promising and then under-delivering, ministers might also consider being honest about the limits of what can be achieved in the world as it is, not as we might like it to be.

Most of us, for example, can see that not every home in tenement-heavy Scotland can have a heat pump attached to it; that few households can afford to pay as much as £10,000 each to replace their old boilers; and that governments must choose between competing priorities.

Saying this, again, is not some kind of anti-environmentalist heresy.

Divisive

And ministers could, for once, make a conscious decision to avoid the divisive virtue signalling and instead focus relentlessly on practical solutions.

Why, I ask, is the Scottish Government wasting everybody’s time banning wood-burning stoves in new builds when it could be coming up with ideas to help millions of families insulate their houses better so that they can turn down the thermostat on cold winter nights, and – in the process – save money on their bills?

Might that not be something the Green movement could champion?

In these financially constrained times, helping people save cash and carbon should be the mantra of all politicians, not just Green ones.

Their moralising and divisive approach is failing.

Mr Harper may now be a pariah within the Green movement but he remains a perceptive politician.

As he told them last year, they must ‘listen as much as they shout, or the Green agenda will not progress’.

He’s absolutely right.

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