Climate change - what’s it all about?

Climate change is a hard topic to talk about, but knowing the facts about climate change and getting to grips with some of the jargon can help give you the confidence you need to start having these essential conversations. In this guide we explain terms such as ‘climate emergency’, ‘net zero’, ‘just transition’ and ‘COP’ so you can talk about these with confidence to your friends, family and colleagues.

The facts

The twin crises of climate change and nature loss are the greatest threats facing humanity.
Over the past 150 years, average global temperatures have risen by 1.2°C.
We are also experiencing more extreme weather events, such as summer heatwaves, rising sea levels, reduced snow cover, very heavy rainfall and flooding. We are already seeing these impacts in Scotland. You may even have noticed this in your own local area.
The issue is referred to as ‘the global climate emergency’ because urgent action is required to avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage. Scotland led the world in becoming one of the first nations to declare a global climate emergency in April 2019.
80% of adults in Scotland view climate change as an immediate and urgent problem. This proportion has grown consistently since 2013.
Climate change is being caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, which are harmful to the environment.
Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, water vapour, nitrous oxide, methane and ozone. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2).
Lots of different human activities result in CO2 emissions. As examples, boiling a litre of water in an electric kettle (70g), driving a mile in an average car (710g), taking a return flight from Glasgow to London (500kg), using your mobile phone for an hour a day for a year (1.25 tonnes), and cutting down one hectare of trees (500 tonnes).
The average CO2 emissions per person in the UK was almost 5 .5 tonnes in 2019. This was more than the world-wide average of 4.7 tonnes.
Climate change and nature loss are linked. In Scotland we have already lost 25% of our wildlife and 11% of our species are currently facing extinction and climate change is making this worse.
Unless we can rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, these changes will rapidly accelerate and cause irreversible damage to our economy, environment and society.
Even with urgent action to reduce emissions, we must also prepare for the impacts of climate change which are already locked in. This is called “adaptation” and involves actions like building resilience for communities to flooding and coastal change as sea levels rise.
Click here for more information on the climate emergency.

Progress already being made

Scotland was one of the first countries in the world to declare a climate emergency and in the last 30 years we've halved our greenhouse gas emissions. As part of our ongoing commitment to protect people and our planet, we've set an ambitious target to reach net zero emissions by 2045.
The equivalent of almost 100% of Scotland’s gross electricity consumption is generated from renewable sources.
In less than 10 years, we have funded the restoration of around 30,000 hectares of peatland, and in the last 3 years, created over 32,000 hectares of new woodland – an area almost double the size of Glasgow.
Since 2009 we have allocated more than £1bn to tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency.
Scotland is at the forefront of tackling biodiversity loss – leading the Edinburgh Process to ensure a ‘whole of government’ approach is adopted globally, while committing to protect 30% of our land for nature by 2030, and to highly protect 10%.
Our Infrastructure Investment Plan includes almost £9bn for environmental sustainability and the transition to net zero. This includes a £2bn cross-Government investments priority for a Low Carbon Fund - demonstrating our commitment to a green recovery.
Our 5-year Hydrogen Action Plan, published in November 2021, sets out the steps we must take over the next five years to achieve our ambition of 5GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2030.
We are making offshore wind central to our climate change targets with the goal of increasing our capacity up to 11 gigawatts by 2030 – enough to power 8 million homes.
NHS Scotland has cut emissions from its buildings by 64% since 1990 and aims for net zero by 2040 along with Scottish Water and Scotland’s colleges.
The Scottish National Investment Bank has committed nearly £200m to date. Around £110m helps in our just transition to net zero: creating new woodlands, scaling-up production of natural fibre insulation, enabling production of tidal turbines and rolling out new charging points for electric vehicles.