Scottish climate nuts in la la land

Scottish climate groupies have been having a nice conference on their own little planet, talking about how much money Scotland would need to fund its transformation to a low carbon economy.

Lady Susan Rice ... told a conference yesterday she estimated £20 billion was needed to fund investments in renewables needed to bring about green schemes such as major wind farms and new marine renewable technology.

This was far higher than the one-off £2bn government funding set for a planned new Green Investment Bank, she said.

Just where do they think the money for these pointless investments is going to come from? Fear not, WWF has an idea. Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, did agree that money was "the big challenge".

However, he pointed out that last year publicly-owned Royal Bank of Scotland made more than £2bn in profits and bonuses.

He questioned why this profit could not be ploughed into development of renewables, in addition to the £2bn pledged to the Green Investment Bank.

Can such a big cheese really be unaware that dividends in general go towards people's incomes and pensions, and that in particular we need RBS's share price to rise so that it can be sold back to the private sector?

Scotland must act fast to capitalise on its lead in development of marine renewables, said a Minister, since Barack Obama had pledged £103bn for renewables over the next decade.

Clearly Scotland's £2bn will go a long way.

Have these people not heard that there is a growing financial crisis?