Climate change: kicking and screaming

The passing by the Scottish Parliament of the Climate Change Bill has not been welcomed in all quarters. MSPs have been criticised for acting without sufficient scientific evidence; for bandying arbitrary figures about; for setting meaningless and/or unachievable targets; and for enacting unjustified powers to fine people who fail to adjust their lifestyles sufficiently.

I do not know whether global temperatures are set to soar by 2080, or the polar ice caps are set to melt with disastrous effects on sea levels, or we are set to lose many species of plants and animals through loss of their habitat due to climate change. (I would have thought the decline in the world's ice caps and glaciers at least is well documented.) However I have long believed that humankind generally is unduly wasteful of the world's resources, and is using them at an unsustainable level.

If the bill requires us to be far more energy and fuel efficient, to use less packaging and recycle more, to think green in every aspect of our lives, is that not a good in itself? I am not a vegetarian (though two daughters have gone that way and as a result we eat more vegetarian dishes at home than we used to), but I understand the argument that eating meat uses up much more resource, in the way of crop to produce animal feed, than a vegetarian diet, and am open to cutting down for that reason - we have to feed an expanding global population somehow.

It's a similar approach that should make us look for renewable alternatives to fossil fuels before they run out, and sooner rather than later. Not only that; surely we cannot go on pumping out emissions and pollutants without some adverse consequences, whether or not the precise effects are foreseeable? Much has already been achieved by way of controls, but globally there is still a long way to go, and someone has to give a lead.

As for the penalty provisions, we should be able to put the Human Rights Act to good use if anyone feels there are undue restraints on their life and liberty. It does after all have a purpose beyond providing something for prisoners to fill their time litigating over.

So let us welcome the bill; I for one will worry less about exact percentages than about whether it helps bring about a culture of striving to look after our planet, and protect it for future generations. And if it does turn out after all that the world is cooling down, we'll be able to keep ourselves warm more cheaply and efficiently.