Tackle Climate Change
We want the transport sector to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
We need to switch investment into sustainable transport, and away from road-building and airport expansion.
Everyone recognises that climate change emissions must be reduced if Scotland, and the rest of the world, is not to see massive environmental and social damage. We want to see the Scottish transport sector play its proper part in delivering reductions in climate change emissions.
Unfortunately, Scotland’s transport sector is currently failing to take serious action. Traffic levels are forecast to increase by a further 27% by 2021. With climate change taking hold, and with the prospect of global oil production peaking in the next few years, road traffic reduction must become a major policy aim.
However, current policy still continues to encourage car and air travel, with a multi-billion pound road-building programme and an active encouragement to wards airport expansion – the very things that will fuel further increases in greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector.
The move to sustainable transport will require:
- Investment in Anglo-Scottish rail links
- Better fuel economy and higher emission standards for all motorised vehicles. A switch to alternative fuels (electric, biofuels) may help deliver this aim, but only providing that these power sources are themselves environmentally sustainable.
- Action to reduce road traffic levels. This can be achieved cost-effectively through investment in sustainable transport infrastructure, stricter enforcement of existing planning guidance, and through the application of appropriate demand management measures.
- A halt to new traffic-generating roads (in particular, the M74 Northern Extension, the Aberdeen western bypass, and the Second Forth Road Bridge).
- A halt to the growth in air travel – the most polluting and energy inefficient mode of travel.