Swinney calls on ‘mainstream’ to unite behind action on climate change

John Swinney will call on Scotland’s “mainstream” to unite behind action to tackle climate change.

Despite the “ever more strident calls for climate inaction” from those on the right, the Scottish First Minister will insist that climate change is a “reality”.

Mr Swinney will cite Storm Eowyn, which saw 100mph gusts of wind batter Scotland, as being evidence that “climate change is happening here and now, in real time, with direct and damaging effects”.

His comments come after US President Donald Trump has vowed to end the “climate extremism” pursued under his predecessor Joe Biden’s administration.

Meanwhile Reform UK has set out its plans for a “windfall tax” on renewable energy, with party chairman Richard Tice saying they want to “undo the effects of net zero”.

Mr Swinney will condemn remarks such as that as being part of an “ever stronger push back against the very idea of a climate crisis and the very need to act”.

He will say that that “push back” is “based on arguments that not only fly in the face of the science – but that fly in the face of reality”.

The First Minister will say he wants to “mobilise the middle, the mainstream, against the ever more strident calls for climate inaction from the right”.

He will also insist that the “reality” of the climate crisis facing the world includes “more violent storms, more severe droughts, a reality of devastating forest fires and life-changing floods”.

And Mr Swinney will tell the audience: “It is not something that is happening over there, safely out of sight and out of mind.

“As we saw with Storm Eowyn, climate change is happening here and now, in real time, with direct and damaging effects in our own towns, in our own countryside, in people’s everyday lives.”

As a result he will say there is a need to “unite for a fundamental purpose – to make a renewed case for the value, for the necessity, of climate action itself”.