Oct 15, 2026, 7:58 AMFrom the linked article:
“John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, recently attended a screening of the [National Emergency Briefing] at the Scottish parliament.”
Last night, he was on Channel 4 News saying something along the lines of “if the emissions from Rosebank and Jackdaw are less than importing from other countries, then they should be part of our path to Net Zero”.
So, the film made no impression on him at all then.
Oct 15, 2026, 8:02 AM…Oil is traded on international markets, not least because the infrastructure for processing it into thousands of products is highly distributed.
North Sea oil and gas is in terminal decline and probably becomes unprofitable in the 2030s.
NetZero is soothing propaganda designed to sustain business as usual before it is anything else.
Good luck with that kind of bullshit independence, Scotland
Oct 15, 2026, 8:10 AM…Self-determination independent of unjust governance is a fine aspiration.
But if the people seeking to lead independence are as deluded as the unjust, then all you’ve done is relocate where delusion flows from. Which won’t get you very far in an overshoot crisis that has *no borders *
Oct 15, 2026, 8:18 AM…I do accept that a political leader has to find a narrative that stops everything from unravelling, but if that narrative is unrelenting invariant bullshit of the kind we’ve heard for decades, then it is just perpetuating bullshit
Oct 15, 2026, 8:28 AM@urlyman Scotland is f*cked over land ownership anyway. Once they go independent, the struggle will be with the relatively small number of people who own everything.
Oct 15, 2026, 8:35 AM@kbm0 Not being Scottish, I’ve no idea where I would wish to place my political energies if I were. But I don’t see how changing who is in charge of the deckchair seating plan on the Titanic helps
Oct 15, 2026, 8:52 AM@urlyman Oil is an asset, however short-lived, toxic and deleterious. If it is written off, then I guess that's one less thing they have to bargain with. So I can understand the political motivation.
Oct 15, 2026, 8:56 AM@kbm0 it should be possible to find a narrative of continuity over the medium term that lets in the light of thermodynamic reality.
But I know of no UK-based political leader in power who does so and the media seem incapable of pushing them to. It’s a hermetically-sealed, artificially-lit room with the oxygen being steadily used up :/
Oct 15, 2026, 9:03 AM@urlyman With consumptive things like AI growth being pushed, it is clear that the climate crisis and environmental catastrophe are way down the agenda now. In the end, the zero sum game we insist on playing with other humans is a harder problem to escape even than the constraints of physical reality.
@urlyman It’s somewhat worse than that, as the devolved nations have bugger all funding for their civil service. Their CS are way easier and cheaper to charm, impress, and suborn. Once you control the person in charge of what the minister sees, trebles all round.
@urlyman The companies have been working hard on planting this opinion, and you can see it blooming north and south of the border both in politicians and union leaders.
Oct 15, 2026, 8:23 AM@BashStKid yes. It is utterly vacuous
@urlyman @BashStKid #Swinney is, unfortunately, utterly vacuous. He is a centrist technocrat -- in his youth a competent one.
But he has nothing to offer Scotland now. A decent man in himself, but not one suited to his current role.