First Minister’s climate credibility is on a knife edge: he must act to make polluters pay

“However, the Scottish Government’s recurrent failure to both meet its own emission reduction targets and to unequivocally oppose new oil and gas, risks making the First Minister’s international climate efforts akin to repeatedly throwing a brick through someone’s window while offering to pay for the damage.

“The Scottish Government needs to urgently scale up its domestic climate action; but that action will be costly. Who foots the bill is a test of political courage and will. The First Minister must demonstrate the same leadership he’s shown on climate finance by maximising the use of devolved tax powers while also pressing the UK Government to use all of the levers at its disposal to fairly tax the biggest and richest polluters who’ve done the most to cause the climate emergency. Their time is up, and their payment is long overdue.”

/ENDS   

For more information and interviews, please contact: Rebecca Lozza, Oxfam Media and Communications Adviser, Scotland and Wales: rlozza1@oxfam.org.uk / 07917738450   

Notes to Editor

• Read Payment Overdue, Fair ways to make polluters across the UK pay for climate justice here: https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/payment-overdue-fair-ways-to-make-polluters-across-the-uk-pay-for-climate-justi-621539/
• Last week, Oxfam Scotland and more than 50 other organisations urged the First Minister to deliver on his commitment to explore “bold” income and wealth tax reforms and highlighted a range of fair tax options which could be implemented using devolved powers, with each raising hundreds of millions more to invest in key national priorities, including climate action. Read The case for fair tax reform in Scotland here: https://bit.ly/fairscottishtax