We are currently enjoying life under Britain’s ‘Greenest Government ever’.

However, that adage does not belong to the UK Government that prematurely made that boast but to the Scottish Government that wants to step away from being Britain’s ‘anything’ if it can get the chance.

As strong as the SNP’s environmental credentials are (and I know one co-editor who would disagree with that line alone, with good reason), there is always room for improvement, as a press release from the Scottish Green Party reminded us this weekend (or at least reminded the few who read it since no newspapers that I noticed actually picked up the story and ran with it).

The press release includes the paragraph:

While SNP Ministers continue to claim 90% of the income from oil and gas in Scottish waters, they have failed to take the corresponding 90% of the emissions from these offshore industries into account. These so-called “unallocated emissions” have risen since 1990, and Scotland’s real emissions have therefore fallen by far less than claimed by Scottish Ministers.

Richard Thomson has already stepped in with a rebuttal, a rebuttal that I believe rather dances around the issue. My understanding of Richard’s point is that the Scottish Government shouldn’t count these offshore oil emissions within Scotland’s world-leading 42% target because this is not a devolved area. So much for “It’s Scotland’s Oil”.

This may or may not be a technically valid point, I don’t know what the scope of ‘Scotland’s emissions’ is once you dig down into the detail but the fact remains that there are emissions not being counted (incidentally, that is for an exploration area that need not be extended, another area where SNP environmental credentials look decidedly flimsy).

There is a similar problem for flights in and out of the UK. As an example, if you fly from New York to Edinburgh, then one of Scotland, the USA or the UK should include the emissions from that flight in their national statistics. No countries in that situation currently do.

The SNP is seemingly quite happy to take an accolade that may be technically true but does not actually go as far as it should to solve the problem at hand. It is statistical fiddling while Scotland burns and is to take NIMBY-ism and turn it on its head. The on display IMBY-ism, for want of a better FoLA*, is to accept emissions off the coast and overhead just to tick a box. It is much easier to fight Westminster for £300m of Climate Change money than it is to fight for the right to count your country’s emissions as your own.

Britain’s Greenest Government ever, yes, but the ducking and diving has to end if the SNP wants to kick on and be genuine world leaders, as promised.

* FoLA – Four Letter Acronym

(Also blogged by Rob Edwards)