Key Findings

• Triple the deforestation in Scotland compared to England

• Complicity of STV in greenwashing

• Plenty of fracking on-going

The Scottish government was discovered to have breached it’s own ministerial code a whopping 28 times according to Friends of the Earth Scotland. A glaring reminder that, despite all the greenwashing, Scotland’s government is beholden to commercial interests like any other state.

From 2001 to 2023, Scotland lost 366 kha of tree cover, equivalent to a 23% decrease in tree cover since 2000 according to Global Forest Watch. This is more than triple the amount that was lost by England in the same time period (114 kha tree cover cover loss).

A number of issues in Scotland was noted on Drilling Maps. For example, the gas leak at an oil refinery in Grangemouth in 2014. Interesting to note that STV no longer has the article up on it’s website. This lead me to look up what it’s position has been on fossil fuels. What I found was largely composed of examples of greenwashing and spotlights on the incompetance of the government inching away from fossil fuels. I couldn’t find a reason why it might be sympathetic towards fossil fuels aside from a registration of a debenture with Barclay’s, a bank infamous for it’s work with the instruments of genocide and fossil fuels. Nothing to suggest influence.

Here is a map showing offshore oil drilling from Drilling Maps

The green points are active drilling/active oil rigs operating. I was unsure on how to differentiate between what is Britain’s and what is Norway’s but regardless they are all still destroying the environment.

Those two black points are marking a potential earthquake from all that fracking. I say “potential” here because there is no strong evidence that they occured due to human activities. I’m not a seismologist, so I can’t explain how they find evidence of human-induced earthquakes. But the location suggests it could be.