I am declaring that there is a climate emergency.

It wasn't long ago that Scotland boasted about its climate commitments. Greta Thunberg even appeared alongside the first minister who promised the most ambitious plan for reducing carbon of all the UK nations. But that's now in tatters, with a target to cut emissions by 75% by the end of the decade scrapped.

Please allow me to begin by setting out my regret.

A more distant goal for net zero still remains.

We must now act to chart a course to 2045 at a pace and a scale that is feasible, fair, and just.

Climate campaigners have called it the worst environment decision in the history of the Scottish Parliament, and it comes in the face of a rapidly changing climate, north and south of the border. In Worcestershire, the county cricket ground has been flooded eight times since the autumn. More of a boating lake than a wicket.

The real high point, which I It's down about 6'4, so that's probably about 5 foot.

Even now, with the season underway, the pitches are unplayable.

The club's been here from around 1899, and in that time, the 30 highest floods recorded, 19 of them have been in the last 24 years. So the data in that sense just doesn't lie.

According to the Met Office, the 18 months to March were England's wettest in records going back to 1836. And across the UK, it has been a windy winter with 11 named storms. In Staffordshire, a caravan was wrecked this week by what's thought to have been a tornado.

Floods, droughts, and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more severe. A lot of the focus is on trying to reach net zero by 2050. But there's a broad scientific consensus that global carbon emissions need to be almost hard by the end of this decade to stand any chance of keeping global warming to one and a half degrees. And that is the way to rein in wild weather.

So scientists are alarmed that Scotland has joined the UK government in watering down climate commitments.

The price for that is paid by Scottish farmers, by people who have their houses flattered, who die in heatwaves in the summer.

The cost of doing nothing to mitigate climate change would be more than the cost of reaching net zero. But while the science is clear, the politics in Scotland and elsewhere are more complicated and climate commitments being tested as never before. Thomas Morskei news.