THE Scottish Greens and Greenpeace have clashed over whether the Scottish Government is “deferring to Boris Johnson” in matters of climate change.
The stooshie came after Patrick Harvie, Scottish Green co-leader and government minister, spoke to the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland about Greenpeace’s criticism of Nicola Sturgeon.
The campaign organisation said the First Minister’s stance on the Cambo oil field –where she has called for further environmental assessments but refused to oppose it outright – did not go far enough.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon's full letter to Boris Johnson on the Cambo oil plan
However, Harvie said that the group did not seem to understand the “significance” of the change in Sturgeon’s stance as Greenpeace is “not particularly politically active in Scotland”.
In response, Greenpeace said its activists had spent the summer visiting communities in Scotland.
Sam Chetan-Welsh, Greenpeace UK’s political campaigner, said: “The ball is still in Nicola Sturgeon’s court. If she wants to show her calls on the UK Government to reassess Cambo are not just a PR exercise, then she should clearly state that her government is against it.”
Speaking to LBC, Green MSP Ross Greer (above) sided with the Scottish Government in the dispute.
Greer said: “It’s fair for those of us who have been in this movement for a long time to critique those others, our friends and our fellow travelers, when they’re not quite getting it right, when they’re landing here in Scotland having spent very little time trying to understand our situation, but have come here to lecture us on the action that we’re taking.”
He said his party “absolutely” understands the environmental movement in Scotland more than Greenpeace does, adding: “Scottish Government policy on oil and gas and a range of other climate issues has been radically improved in just the last few months as a result of the presence of Greens in government.
“Remember the SNP are the party of ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’, and they’re now finally the party who are able to admit that we can’t keep drilling for oil and gas forever.”
He said Sturgeon’s party needed to go further and that his party would push them to do so, adding that it was “entirely fair” to criticise “London-based NGOs [which] come in and tell us what they think we should be doing”.
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