WITH less than a week to go to the local election polling day, The National are interviewing party leaders to get their last pitch to voters. We spoke to Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie about how local councils can help tackle the climate crisis, what the big issues are on the doorstep, and what issues he thinks will dominate the indyref2 campaign.
Could you tell us about what the Greens’ local priorities are and what are the key themes of the manifesto that voters should be aware of?
In many ways the priorities for the Greens are the same at local level as at national level because a big theme for us is that so many of the huge challenges that Scotland and the rest of the world is facing are big, global challenges.
Things like the climate emergency, the cost-of-living crisis, we all know that those have big global causes but they require action at local level, things like insulation, making our homes more energy efficient, things like investing in good quality public transport, so many of the solutions to the climate emergency are also solutions to the cost-of-living crisis, but they require action at local level.
Are there particular areas that Greens are hoping to get more councillors in, do you think you’ll have a better chance in the cities rather than rural areas?
I mean very clearly Glasgow and Edinburgh have been our strongest areas in the past, we expect them still to continue to do well. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start to see a bit less of a gap between the urban and rural areas this time round. Places like Glasgow and Edinburgh, maybe Aberdeen, Stirling, we will see some … well I hope we’re going to see some gains in those urban areas but also there are many smaller communities around Scotland where we’ve got great levels of Green activism focused at a very local community level. You never take anything for granted and you have to count the votes at the end of the day to know how well you’re doing, but I’m really hopeful that we’re going to see some gains in more diverse areas of Scotland than we’ve had the opportunity to represent at council level before.
There’s an almost culture war between motorists and cyclists, it’s not just a city problem it’s in rural areas too, so how do you think Green councillors can tackle this and what needs to change to make the roads and infrastructure easier for everyone to navigate?
We need to break down this idea that there are cyclists over here, car drivers over there and public transport users somewhere else. Most people have a mix, they get around in a mix of different ways, there’s plenty of people who drive a car sometimes who also walk or cycle and use public transport at other times.
The shared aspiration we should all have are for communities that are safe, welcoming and affordable to move around in, in the most sustainable ways. We know that we’ve had decades of car-dominated culture in this country, where albeit there might be people who still think there’s a war on motorists or use that phrase, I think it’s the minority of people who are trying to politically exploit that idea who genuinely will make that case.
There does need to be big investment in active travel, in walking, cycling and wheeling in Glasgow. I think finally there is a level of ambition in Glasgow to achieve that. I’m painfully aware though that’s not the case universally around the country.
We do have some local authorities that have a lot of ambition on this and are now setting out long term plans both for the decisions they make and the way they spend their money, other councils are not at square one yet and we’ve got to recognise that we need to foster that local leadership and create that sense that every community can benefit for those changes in a way that works for people.
The councillors who are elected will be in the job five years and we’re at a crucial point in reaching a lot of the environmental targets in 2030, so how achievable you think the targets are at the moment and how can councillors at a local level implement that because it’s not just top-down, everyone is going to have to work together to achieve that?
No question about it, and again I think the track record of green councillors when they’ve been there in the room, particularly in the cities, Glasgow and Edinburgh where there’s a bigger group of green councillors, it does get results. Some councils in Scotland have seen one green councillor champion the cause of the climate emergency and recognising the scale of the crisis. Where we’ve had more councillors, like in Glasgow, we’ve led the work on the city council’s response to the emergency, working genuinely across party lines trying to bring people together to achieve that and as a result we’ve got the commitment for net zero by 2030.
Councils are going to have a really critical role over the next year or so actually on one thing which is quite close to my work in government, which is energy efficiency and renewable heat. We’ve just recently passed in the last session heat networks legislation for Scotland and that creates a responsibility and a duty on all councils to produce local heat and energy efficiency strategies.
Another big issue in this election is rubbish. Glasgow has a really bad recycling rate, there are issues all over the country, what do you think the big thing that should be done to make a difference and change in how we deal with rubbish and waste and it doesn’t have such a bad environmental impact?
If you speak to people from across the political spectrum all the parties have been out canvassing in the last few weeks and months, you don’t go into a tenement stair without having a conversation about the rubbish at the moment, it’s a problem right across our city.
As I was saying earlier about things like waste and energy and where we should get to with transport, reducing the volume of it, reducing the burden on the system is the big priority. If we keep churning out evermore rubbish and waste and think about all of it as waste instead of thinking of it as resources, just thinking that the waste management system has to keep coping, that’s never going to work, that’s never going to be sustainable. So the action that we’ve taken on the biggest investment that Scotland’s seen in recycling in decades that is going to make a big difference.
When you’re talking about cars there’s also the environmental impact, in Glasgow Hope Street always comes out on top of the most polluted street in Scotland, would the greens support a form of congestion charge into big cities in those scenarios where there is a particularly high pollution problem?
We’re looking at what all the options are and I don’t think anyone has a simple silver bullet that is going to fix everything.
I live in one of the most polluted roads in Glasgow as well, Dumbarton Roa in Partick and for decades areas like that have seen illegal levels of air pollution, they’ve consistently been breaching the legal limits on air pollution and we’ve seen air quality action plans, air quality management areas and all of this kind of stuff.
It hasn’t fixed the problem precisely because it’s rooted in demand for road space and the dominance of particularly private cars, but also the deregulation of public transport has meant bus companies have been allowed to drive around pretty old and polluting vehicles. Now that’s changing.
We’re seeing greener buses, like electric and hybrid buses, into the mix. We’re seeing new standards on the low emission zone that’s going to ultimately bring in all vehicles stage by stage and that’s really good progress. We need to link up those air pollution priorities alongside the social priority that people can access the stuff they need, making public transport affordable and reliable.
Turning to independence – say that pro-Yes parties make gains in this election while pro-UK parties suffer losses, do you think that strengthens the mandate for indyref2?
It would restate the mandate, I don’t think it particularly needed strengthening. We’ve had election after election both at UK and Scottish Parliament level where the people of Scotland have chosen pro-independence majorities. There comes a point where you can’t expect the voters to keep banging their heads off a brick wall.
If you believe in the principle that this is a choice for the people of Scotland to make, how on earth are they supposed to make it, other than by continually electing and reelecting pro-independence majorities. If you look at the opinion polling as well which asks a wider range of questions, it’s pretty clear that even some of the people who want to vote no, do accept that Scotland should be able and have the right to make this choice.
Most people, regardless of how they’re going to vote, do think that Scotland has a right to make this choice and it should be the Scottish parliament where the decision around timing and the question should be made. The longer the UK government just keeps saying to Scotland no you can’t, then more and more people will say yes we will. I would love to start debating why we could create and how we could create a better, more welcoming and humane immigration system than the one at UK level. Treating asylum seekers with dignity instead of shipping them off to a country where their human rights are likely to be violated. I would love to get into a debate on energy policy that’s reserved to Westminster, and why we can’t even sit around the table with UK ministers and debate the things that we might even have in common.
You mentioned a few there, but what do you think the key issues will be in the Yes campaign when indyref2 is coming?
I think very clearly one of the big difference from 2014 is around energy, not to say that no-one was arguing for the transition in 2014, we were doing that very vocally. But that notion that the transition away from fossil fuels is here and needs to be underway fast as well as fair, that case is now accepted across the political spectrum. Almost nobody is still saying drill for every drop, there’s a recognition that globally we have more fossil fuel than we can afford to use. The expansion of the fossil fuel industry in the midst of a climate emergency is unquenchable, and is also not Scotland’s good economic bet for the future. Scotland’s got an incredible potential as a renewable energy nation.
Not just generating renewables for our own needs, but for export as well, either directly as green electricity or through things like green hydrogen for an export market as well as industrial uses here at home. I think much more clearly now than in 2014 that notion that Scotland’s future is green is dominating most of the political landscape, it might not all be owned by the green party, I think we’re ahead of the curve in terms of leading that debate, opening up the possibility of more political parties to start recognising that their former attachment to the fossil fuel industry has to come to an end.
I think that’s the influence you get when you get greens in the room, things move in that direction. The economic proposition for independence this time round is going to be much more compelling because it’s going to be much more compelling because it’s focused on that green future that our economy and our society can have if we invest in it now.
We’ve had the referendum bill talked about since the last election and it’s not going to be laid before next week before the election, so do you think it will be laid before summer [recess]?
I know everyone’s really keen to get a date, they want to know when the starting gun’s going to fire. As far as I’m aware there’s not been a specific date for that set yet so I don’t want to speak above my paygrade. I’m really confident that we will continue to advocate for the promise that we were elected on, not just the Greens but also the SNP, both committed to having that question put to the people during this term of parliament, that’s what we intend to deliver.
