Despite a certain amount of nervousness and political parties playing games, the introduction of Scotland’s Low Emission Zones has gone well. This demonstrates that politicians can be bolder when introducing environmental measures. Glasgow has had an LEZ in operation for …
Air pollution progress – good but not enough
Friends of the Earth Scotland’s annual round up of air pollution found that, in 2022, all the main monitoring sites in Scotland met legal standards set to protect health. This has only happened once before, when the pandemic lockdown drastically reduced …
Sailing into disaster
Despite producing as much climate pollution as the country of Germany, international shipping has largely escaped much attention in the climate debate. Most countries don’t even include these emissions in their official carbon accounts. Sending things by ship is efficient. If we …
A right to clean air ?
Today is Clean Air Day, an annual opportunity to celebrate progress in making the air we breathe less bad for our health. But we are not doing that well and proposed new standards make that starkly obvious. In 2020 Scotland met …
Local action for the environment
As Scotland goes to the polls today we should remember the huge power that our councils have to deliver on climate and environment ambitions. Our 32 councils control a huge range of things that shape our daily lives. How far you …
30 years of progress, but still not enough
Today is my last day at Friends of the Earth Scotland, after 30 years in the Scottish environment movement. There has been good progress in those three decades and the environment and climate change have moved from fringe concerns to mainstream …
Celebrating progress for the environment in the past 5 years
It is worth pausing to remember that the last five years have seen some remarkable progress.
Tackling traffic can help take us where we need to go
Reducing traffic can make our towns more liveable and boost climate fight.
Electric vehicles advance as part of the transport answer
End date of fossil fuelled cars is good news but our transport system much change in larger ways.
Making Polluters Pay
The lessons the legal system needs to learn from the Mossmorran flaring saga
Coronavirus and the climate
There is no "good news" for the environment from the Coronavirus shutdown.
The rise and rise of electric vehicles
We're missing opportunities to phase out fossil fuelled cars.