When banks pale into insignificance

SERIOUS as the global financial crisis is, it will pass. There are other threats to society which are even worse and which we ignore at our peril – most importantly, planetary climate change. That is the message of an imaginative conference being held today by the David Hume Institute, which imagines what Scotland could be like in the year 2050 if we do not take urgent steps to halt manmade global warming.

One apocalyptic vision offered at the conference, by Professor Jan Bebbington of St Andrews University, is of the home of golf being drowned by rising seas caused by the melting of the polar ice caps.

However, the conference also offers positive ...