What if you threw a consultation and nobody came? Not a problem for the Scottish Executive, whose recent consultation into the Climate Bill garnered 21,000 responses, most demanding that international aviation be included in the emissions reductions targets. Despite what civil servant automatons claim, it's not too complicated - basically you just convert 'bunker fuel' into emissions and include it within your calculations. An A grade GCSE maths student could probably do it.
But like their British counterparts, it all got too hard for the Scottish Government. They really, really don't want to include international aviation, because then they'll either have to tackle wanton flying or miss their emissions targets. Faced with thousands of responses, the Government did something rather sneaky - they lumped all the responses together into 8 different responses (one for each NGO that got its members to respond) and promptly announced that just a third of respondents wanted aviation emissions included.
Dr. Richard Dixon, head of WWF Scotland, was understandably pretty pissed off. "When the government themselves solicited tens of thousands of responses on the smoking ban, they were delighted to count them all. However, with more than 20,000 people telling the government to do the right thing by including flying in the climate bill, it is hugely disappointing that they have gone out of their way to sideline these responses." Some faceless civil servant responded, "Difficult to assess emissions... international effort... more than one flight... can't be arsed... going to miss my flight."
