The final stage of the Resilient Scotland Plan runs from 2025 with the upcoming Parliamentary session ending with Scotland becoming an independent country. All of the work started in Part Two will continue and the work that could not start due to the limitations of devolution can now commence. By 2045, the plan will be completely and Scotland will have been transformed into a net zero-carbon country with a resilient economy that works for All of Us.
The Resilient Scotland Plan provides extensive detail on a practicable, deliverable programme for achieving what everyone now says is necessary – a vibrant, green economy which creates good jobs and delivers economic fairness. It is well past the time where it is viable for individuals and organisations still to be talking about broadly supporting the principle and we are now racing past the point where vague aspirations and boiler-plate language should be accepted.
It is no good to talk about ‘green investment’ if, by now, we are not identifying where that investment should come from, who should pay for it and how, and where specifically that investment should be going. It is farcical to suggest that a bit more of what we’re currently doing is even close to sufficient. Pick your crisis – Covid or the environment. Either in themselves requires an expenditure of effort and a level of investment that societies make only every few generations. Combine them and the case for being that generation is overwhelming.
What creates environmental vulnerability is the same thing that creates economic and social vulnerability. It is the economy in which we were promised all failures would be ended through growth – yet it is the economy where 40 years of growth have actually accelerated the failures and caused an increase in the rate at which the economy ‘falls over’ in the face of even minor crises. It is time for Scotland to use its eyes and its brains. If we are promised that growth fixes everything. If, after 40 years of growth, so many things got worse. If that economy gets more vulnerable the more it stretches supply chains and the more it extracts. If so, how can more of the same achieve resilience? Resilience is not made out of vulnerability, it is the alternative to vulnerability.
If we have learned anything through the Covid crisis it is that half measures and hoping for the best achieve next to nothing. You do it – or you don’t do it. This Plan is something serious we can do.