If SNP and Greens can't rise above disagreements, what hope is there?

Harvie says that if Greens leave government many will believe they are “just a party that walks away when things get difficult”. That’s absolutely true. There will also be some despair about the ability of generally like-minded parties to do politics differently to the ya, boo, sucks of Westminster.

Holyrood is designed to produce cooperation and coalition government. It models a different, consensual, way of doing politics from the huffy adversarial strutting stuff that goes on down south, where consensus on policy direction generally lasts for just one parliament (or one prime minister) before the pendulum swings, the other side wins big time (thanks to first past the post) and sets about cheerfully dismantling everything for the craic.

Or worse. Settle for the unsatisfactory half-arsed solutions promoted by the last guys cos they haven’t time to grab the wheel and make a truly big change of course in five mediocre years.

Holyrood should be better than that, because on all the big issues except independence, there is a fairly settled will.

The SNP and Greens are two independence-supporting parties which back renewable energy and shifting away from oil. If these two parties can’t find common cause and work through differences rationally, what hope is there?

If the Bute House Agreement is scrapped, each will still find themselves courting or supporting the other since the alternative is petty opposition by Labour and the Tories, culminating in a vote of no confidence as soon as the minority SNP government slips up and a snap Scottish election.

Now it’s possible that a minority government might produce better policy since the governing party must win over truly hostile parties – vote by time-consuming vote.

But in an election year where everyone’s trying to put clear water between themselves and rivals, it’ll be difficult for the SNP to find common cause with any Unionist opponents. And will the Scottish Greens be forgiven by SNP voters preciously happy to lend party candidates their second vote on the list? Probably not.

Obviously, many prominent SNP politicians have simply had enough of the Greens – even though failed green policies like the bottle deposit return scheme were actually inherited from SNP ministers, or supported by the whole Scottish Parliament.

Equally obviously, Green party members were appalled at last week’s acknowledgement that nothing in the Scottish Government’s kit bag can possibly help Scotland reach the first net-zero target in 2030.

But whilst everyone gets exercised about the personalities and the very substantial difference of opinion over the Cass Review, does anyone actually care about the multiple policy failures embedded in that sobering failure to go green?

Governments around the world are finding it harder to progress climate goals than create them and it’s doubly difficult for a devolved government without direct control over energy and very limited borrowing powers. Should that knowledge have produced a little humility back in 2019 when “world-leading” targets were announced by Nicola Sturgeon? Maybe.

But better, bolder plans might have been possible if the Scottish Government had involved experts and think tanks like Common Weal, to decide what changes could make the biggest impact, how devolved powers could get us there and how that big mission could be communicated well to enthuse a whole nation.

It didn’t happen.

The axed green goal is no ordinary policy failure but the culmination of chronic timidity across almost all policy sectors where legislation often nibbles at problems instead of resolving them and seems over-reliant on mainstream corporate thinking from KPMG and other private consultancy firms.

The result, from the public’s point of view, is a welter of fiddling while Rome burns – a load of micro-management and an absence of strategic, well-communicated plans. Green policy in Scotland has been bitty and confusing. And that’s grim.

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It leaves voters resigned to the idea that nothing really changes – a gloomy outlook that disproportionately damages the independence cause, because it hinges on the belief that change is possible.

Humza Yousaf looks increasingly like Scotland’s President Obama. A leader who broke the mould by dint of his ethnic identity – and a man considered good-natured and well-meaning. But a leader who didn’t force through radical enough change to reach electoral dry land and left chunks of the electorate vulnerable to opportunistic shysters and personality politics.

Time for a reset.

There is NO point rushing ahead with the current policy mix in a bid to reach the extended green goal of 2045.

We need humility, inclusion, reflection, analysis – and some hard work to unravel and circumvent the big problems blocking Scotland’s net zero ambitions, not the wee ones.

District (collective) heating has been the norm across Northern Europe since the first oil crisis of the 1970s and earlier. Just as each urban home doesn’t have its own borehole to provide water, heat is delivered collectively not individually, from a central boiler via pipes.

District heating is the main reason Nordic citizens haven’t frozen solid in Arctic winters. So why not here?

Well, successive Westminster governments baulked at the cost and Maggie’s energy privatisation was the tin lid. Now we have tens of thousands of individual boilers – a costly nightmare to upgrade which must end if we are to axe fuel poverty, improve lives and cut emissions.

Scotland won’t reach its green goals without better insulation (a cause that prompted Harvie to crash the SNP budget 15 years ago) and a switch to more efficient district heating that basically socialises the cost of staying warm in this country.

So, what’s the problem? The high cost of “green” electricity.

The price of wind energy is about 7.5 pence per kilowatt/hour (kWh)to produce but is charged at the price of gas (roughly 30 pence per kWh). It’s madness – and even kamikaze chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng knew it, promising either to create a separate price for renewables, or adopt “locational pricing” which according to green supplier Octopus Energy, would produce the biggest cost savings in Scotland.

It didn’t happen.

And of course, the tail can’t wag the dog. Scots can’t force any Westminster government, Labour or Tory, to make the pricing changes that would encourage the long overdue rollout of district heating systems based on heat pumps and other electrical supply sources. But Holyrood can devise a way to bypass this green roadblock.

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One eco-heating expert suggests creating private systems linking massive wind farms with district heating schemes.

He believes the private investment cash is there – the first schemes might need to be underwritten by the Scottish Parliament to offer confidence.

Perhaps such ventures could be underwritten or owned by councils? That’s above my pay grade.

But without a plan to crack this problem, almost all goals to decarbonise heating (the bulk of emissions) are just virtue-signalling.

Robin McAlpine (above) has written a strong piece for Common Weal calling for a pause and a genuine national conversation about Scotland’s green goals. He’s asked if the basket of new/old policies rushed out last week by the Scottish Government is the best one. And he is 100% right.

I’d guess Scots will support a strategy to share, cut and decarbonise the cost of heating.

But that needs a bold, viable strategy with local enlistment and better communication than anything the Scottish Government has done to date.

Making this challenge a new shared priority could be politically game-changing for both parties to the Bute House Agreement.

But is there the tiniest hope in hell it will even get discussed?