comment, 09 May 2006
So now we know. The new government agency, Transport Scotland, does care about climate change.
It's not, as critics have alleged, ignoring one of the biggest threats facing the world. On the contrary, it is worried about it - worried that it might stem the growth in road traffic.
That, at least, was the impression given by Frances Duffy, Transport Scotland's director of strategy and investment, at a conference in Edinburgh yesterday. Faced with a barrage of criticism about the Scottish Executive's failure to take account of climate change in its transport policy, she could only come up with one counter-argument.
We have commissioned research on the impact of landslips and mudslides triggered by fiercer and more frequent storms, she assured the 100-strong audience. We are concerned that they could damage the trunk road network, and inhibit the free flow of cars and lorries.
Duffy was addressing 'Facing the Flood', a conference organised by the campaign group, TRANSform Scotland. She was responding to a trenchant attack from Dr Richard Dixon, the director of WWF Scotland, who accused successive transport ministers of repeatedly failing to assess the environmental impact of their plans for new roads.
Duffy left the conference shortly after her talk, so did not hear the criticisms that it provoked. Transport Scotland just doesn't get it, delegates pointed out. It is stuck in last century's 'predict and provide' road-building mindset, oblivious to the earthshaking challenges posed by pollution and the rising global temperatures it causes.
To see climate change as a threat to the trunk road network, without any apparent understanding of the role that roads play in causing climate change, is to miss the entire point. So blinkered and irresponsible is Transport Scotland in its approach, that it doesn't even seem to appreciate the irony of its position.
