COP26 has finally got under way in Glasgow. There were teething problems with this massive and high-profile conference, leading to some delegates having to wait for hours before they could get access to the venue, despite the UK Government having an extra year to plan as the conference was originally scheduled for 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic.
Naturally the sight of delegates waiting for hours in the cold and complaining about chaos and confusion led some commentators in a British media which is as keen on an SNPbad story as an oil corporation is on green-washing to leap to blame "the Scottish hosts".
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Of course the blame lies squarely with the British Government. No one should be surprised that the UK's organisation of COP26 is mired in the same chaos, confusion and incompetence that characterises everything else that the Johnson administration puts its hands on.
Equally no one should be surprised that the British Government has refused to apologise. Conservatives don't apologise, they just demand that other people, and usually the Scottish Government, apologise. The international delegates should perhaps be grateful that Priti Patel isn't already making plans to deport them. If the Conservatives were as keen on sending carbon emissions back to where they came from as they are about sending back migrants, this conference could be declared a success already.
While Scotland is the location for the conference, the British Government has gone to some lengths to assert that Scotland is not the host. Boris Johnson has refused to give the Scottish First Minister an official role in the conference proceedings and delegates are met at the conference venue with a prominently flying Union flag. The Scottish flag was nowhere to be seen.
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If Scotland were indeed the official host of the conference it could use its demonstrable commitment to net-zero carbon emissions and the country's immense progress on the development of renewable energy in order to give it the moral authority to pressure other nations into making the changes that are needed if the global rise in temperature is to be kept below 1.5C by the end of the century. However, speaking today, the First Minister acknowledged that no country, including Scotland, is doing enough.
She said: "I'm not going to betray any secrets here, when I say I would prefer Scotland to be round the negotiating table here in our own right, pushing forward. But short of that, we've got to make sure we're doing everything we can. First and foremost, that means doing the things we need to do, and winning credibility.
“Scotland, I think, by any measure, can claim to be a world leader in climate action, but the bar of world leadership is far too low. So it doesn't take enough to be a world leader. We've got to up our own ambition and delivery against that ambition."
READ MORE: COP26: Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland can 'corral' states into action
As things stand, Scotland's credibility in the fight against climate change is immeasurably harmed because we are shackled to a Conservative government in Westminster that is still doling out exploration licences to oil and gas companies in the North Sea and which recently approved a new coal mine in Cumbria.
Just this weekend Scotland Secretary Alister Jack displayed a tone deafness to COP26 which he usually reserves for denying Scottish democracy. Jack insisted that the British Government "needs to keep backing oil and gas".
With the struggle against climate change, as with so much else, Scotland is not "punching above its weight" thanks to the UK. The British state is holding us back. Scotland has the potential to make a much larger and more positive impact on the world as an independent nation.
This piece is an extract from today's REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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