Developing an Environment Strategy for Scotland

While this view is well-meaning and very open-ended it totally ignores the vast disconnect between current thinking and reality. There seems to be a tree-hugger mentality within the statement, however when you see around the countryside for example there seems to be a vision of filling every last area of our countryside with housing estates and wind farms. This is destroying the fabric of many rural areas and removing "breathing space" for the countryside for all as a means of escape and recuperation. There is no respite from modern stress and these areas prOvide such respite for people, but they are being removed one by one.

How does concreting over natural habitat constitute protecting nature?

It's almost surreal and delusional that any group of people or government can envisage that they can somehow control or regulate the world climate temperature against colossal cosmic forces. There is actually no direct evidence that any by-product of man including CO2 alter the climate in any way, CO2 levels are driven by mainly ocean warming or cooling, which is regulated by jet stream and geological forces including underwater volcanoes, which heat the seas. This is directly-affected by solar activity, which also drives the jet stream.

I agree that biodiversity should be protected for all and that our environment should be left alone and not tampered with or built on excessively due to increasing population, the population of any country needs managed to match the available land and resources.

Access to nature: I think this is really important that people have access to the outdoors howver this should not turn into beating people with a stick to influence decision making and policies.

In many places there are cycle lanes placed on roads and built back stop lines on road junctions to allow bikes to stop in front of cars. This is putting cyclists in danger and leading to a morally superior attitude of cyclists, who have plenty of cycle tracks to use. It is also making less road space for motorists and for pedestrians who have to endure cyclists forcing their way through on pavements.

Air Quality: The air quality has been vastly improved over the years and yet there are still drastic measures being proposed to somehow reduce it even further, mainly based on scare stories linking tens of thousands of deaths to air quality, this has been show that at best improves life expectancy by, statistically speaking, at the very most, a few months. The objective to phase out new petrol and diesel cars is wishful thinking, and would require a dramatic increase in electricity production and a total makeover of the whole electricity, urban and peoples schedules to incorporate electric cars as the main source of private transport.

Renewables only work when the Sun is shining or the wind isn't blowing, and they require vast swathes of land to be covered for only a moderate benefit, it even at all. Wind farms require large back up diesel generators, which incidentally is the main source of PM10's in our environment. So if Diesel cars are banned then the PM10's will then come from those generators.

The air quality in cities and large towns comes down mainly to bus and taxi emissions because that is the main source of transport in those areas, and that is why the main pollutant sources of PM10 and 2.5 are from large diesel engines. As well as this buses do not need to meet the more stringent emissions laws that cars do.

To start banning private cars from more and more areas is unfair and will not meet the requirements of cleaner air in towns and cities. Within main towns and cities there are now more and more traffic calming and restrictions as well as many more sets of lights, that in many cases cause congestions and more pollution. On a recent observation a newly installed set of lights on a main road stopped over 60 cars to let one car out of a junction that is rarely if ever used, and is easy to navigate with normal traffic flow. I ask how is this achieving cleaner air and reduced consumption of fuel?

business resource efficiency: There is a monumental effort required to encourage people to stop throwing rubbish onto the street and for businesses to store their rubbish in a more responsible way, this is a huge problem I see every day and it is an absolute eyesore. Some of the excuses I have heard for dropping litter include "there wasn't a bin nearby" or "it doesn't matter". This type of attitude needs to change radically. There is also a huge problem with the amount of takeaway outlets that seem to be springing up everywhere. This is encouraging huge amounts of litter to be strewn all over the streets, including take away bags, polystyrene boxes, pizza boxes and general bags of rubbish from these establishments.