THE bad news keeps piling up. A damaging No-Deal Brexit is all but certain. Scotland’s unemployment rate is now the highest among the UK nations. The Scottish Government has, yet again, missed its targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in a week where we have been told by energy experts we have only six months to take action to avert climate breakdown.

Actually, it’s worse than that, because the figures show that in 2018 our emissions went up. In her statement to Parliament, the Environment Secretary, Roseanna Cunningham, appeared to blame the “Beast from the East” storm making us all turn our heating up. That is not good enough. “World-leading targets” are meaningless if you don’t actually meet them.

No, it’s even worse than that. The Scottish Government has almost no plans to meet its targets. Its ideas include relying on technology that isn’t even available yet and taking a lead from the fossil fuel industry. This is a government that sets targets and then ignores them.

When my Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie raised this with Nicola Sturgeon this week, she responded by pointing out how Westminster still holds many of the policy levers over energy policy. She’s not wrong, but as the Scottish Trades Union Congress has reported, there is much Scotland could do if it had the political will, such as using the leverage of a publicly owned energy company.

An action plan to build back better from the Covid-19 crisis can tackle Scotland’s unemployment, mitigate the impacts of Brexit and reduce our emissions. A Green New Deal is a set of policy actions that can be implemented to create jobs, build new industries and make Scotland a fairer country, ready for the challenges of the future.

Take the energy industry, for instance. Scotland has 25% of all the renewable energy in Europe, and we have only, so far, tapped into a tiny bit of it. The STUC’s figures show that between 2014 and 2018, employment in Scotland’s low-carbon and renewable energy economy flatlined. We are missing out on a great opportunity here. Not only can we generate and export renewable energy, we can do better than that.

As the wind industry developed, a lack of government investment in Scotland and the UK drove the supply chain overseas, so that now Scotland imports most of its technology, manufacturing and construction work for offshore wind.

Those are jobs and resources Scotland lost. The tidal energy industry is still in its infancy, and if Scotland acts quickly, we have the chance do things differently this time around, to keep the manufacture, assembly and maintenance of tidal turbines in Scotland.

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As one example, the company that I work for, Orbital Marine Power, is building our O2 turbine in Dundee at the moment. The steel for it was bought from Liberty Steel in Motherwell, and the plates were welded at Gray Fabrication in Fife.

Texo in Dundee will assemble and launch this 70m turbine which will generate enough clean power to meet the needs of more than 1700 homes in the UK.

The turbine will be installed at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, where it will feed clean, predictable power into the National Grid.

This isn’t a pipe dream, this is the future and it could be the start of something big for Scotland. Something big enough to keep Ferguson Marine, BiFab and other shipyards and fabricators around Scotland busy for decades.

Nova Innovation, an Edinburgh-based company, also designs and builds tidal turbines; there is a whole industry here waiting to take off. With vision, investment and the right support, tidal energy has the potential to deliver a significant supply of low cost, green energy as predictable as the tides themselves.

THE energy industry is one piece of the puzzle. As well as renewable energy, our Scottish Green New Deal would invest in warm homes, reforest Scotland to the European average and transform our transport infrastructure.

All of these policies are ones that are within the powers of the Scottish Government. They are clear actions that would benefit quality of life, create jobs and boost the economy.

The Scottish Greens have also led calls for a shorter working week and a universal basic income as a new way to provide a secure safety net for all and build a wellbeing economy that is less focused on endless passive consumption of stuff and more about doing fulfilling things.

But with the Covid crisis, the jobs crisis and the climate crisis upon us, and with the Brexit crisis looming, the time to act is now. We can’t afford to wait for more powers or independence, much as they would help.

The Scottish Government must act. We know from government reaction to the Covid-19 crisis what an emergency response looks like. Let’s see an emergency response to the very real, life-threatening climate emergency.

If we are to move quickly, we need to rebuild the public sector to build back a better economy and create new jobs. There is much the Scottish Government can do if it has the courage and the political will. The Scottish Greens will continue to provide the energy required.