GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS

It is generally agreed that there is only one Planet Earth, so we'd better take care of it.

Sometimes, though, it would appear that there are two worlds on Planet Earth.

On the one hand, there is the world in which the solutions to some of our most pressing crises have been recognised and are being implemented. Thus, the United States weather office (NOAA) has recently announced that large-scale green energy systems can affordably replace fossil fuels as the world's primary energy source within the space of twenty years. The key word here is "affordably". If you're a nimby idiot, you'll tell anybody who'll listen that renewables don't work and cost the earth. People who know what they're on about, though, beg to differ.

Over three years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has collated 16 billion pieces of weather data. It then ran various programmes to determine the optimum sites for wind and solar farms in the United States and figured out that regional variations could easily be compensated for by means of a sensible grid. All those daft arguments against wind and solar power have started to crumble.

Good news, then, from the States. And good news too in the UK, where David Cameron was moved to reply to the insane letter sent to him by 101 Tory MPs, led by that fearsome crusader against the facts, Chris Heaton-Harris, which called on the prime minister to sell Britain downriver once and for all.

Cameron pointed out in his letter to the 101 Tory traitors and dimwits that there are "perfectly hard-headed reasons" for building more onshore windfarms. The PM added: "I am determined that we seize the economic opportunities in renewable supply chains as the global race for capital in low-carbon sectors intensifies."

Putting it plainly - not only are onshore windfarms an integral part of a "balanced UK electricity mix", but when the rest of the world is competing for capital investment to stride ahead with their renewables, which means jobs and lots of them, then it would be political suicide for the UK to duck out of the race just because a few right-wing lunatics don't approve of windfarms. We need the electricity that windfarms so ably produce, we need to reduce our carbon emissions, and we need to face up to reality. Harrumphing from the back-benches and throwing your support behind grotesquely selfish and dishonest nimby groups does Britain no favours at all. It's a betrayal of the national interest for the sake of the narrowest of ideological prejudices.

So, sometimes the world isn't so bad. But, as the Delingpoles and Heaton-Harrises of our once decent land continually prove, there is another world out there. One which cares nothing for the facts, the public good, the national interest, the needs of future generations and the planet. It's an alternative reality in which everything - but everything - is subject to personal greed, self-interest and the power of the lie.

Step forward Donald Trump, uber-nimby and fanatical right-wing bastard.

We've mentioned before that Trump, who has been building an unsightly and unnecessary "luxury" golf resort in Aberdeenshire, has got his knickers in a twist about a proposed offshore windfarm. He's thrown his toys out of the pram because the First Minister of Scotland isn't behaving like a proper little native and giving this tasteless American hoodlum everything he wants.

Now, Trump has thrown his not inconsiderable weight behind the depressingly bigoted anti-windfarm group known as CATS (Communities Against Turbines Scotland).

Quite funny that they call themselves CATS, by the way, seeing as domestic cats kill thousands of times as many birds as wind turbines do.

Anyway, CATS isn't based anywhere near the proposed Aberdeenshire offshore wind array, of course. No, the nasty nimby nutters who really are determined to destroy our nation's future now campaign a long way from home. Remember the argument that Lenchwick Windfarm shouldn't go ahead because the locals opposed it (even though most of the locals didn't oppose it, the rest didn't really know what a windfarm was, and many of the objections came from people who'd never even heard of the Lenches)? Well, there's a coda to that argument now. Windfarms shouldn't happen where (a) the locals don't want them and (b) where anybody else doesn't want them (see Callanish, Isle of Lewis).

So Eric "Jabba the Hutt" Pickles better be ready for this when his silly Localism Bill is introduced. Then it won't matter at all what the locals actually think. A few nutcases from somewhere else in the British Isles will believe that they have the power (and the right) to prevent a windfarm from being installed anywhere.

CATS is a Delingpole of an organisation. Guess what - they think nuclear is the answer (a sure sign of someone who really hasn't thought things through) and they quote those professional liars of the Renewable Energy Foundation. We can gather from this that CATS is not particularly interested in the truth - hence their claims, already and repeatedly disproven, that renewable "subsidies" are the cause of sharply rising fuel bills.

Donald "DO AS I SAY" Trump is giving CATS money, lawyers and anything else he can think of to fight the offshore windfarm that won't affect him at all. Yep, that's right: an American billionaire with weird hair is marching around our country telling us what we can and cannot do. He has dedicated himself to fighting a perfectly sane, safe, unthreatening and VITAL development because he doesn't want his gormless golfers to see something in the sea off the coast of a country he doesn't own. And he has decided that the self-serving delusionists of CATS are the people to do his dirty work for him.

Evidently, there are still people around for whom reality is a flexible concept. People for whom the future doesn't exist. People who care nothing for their country.

Alex Salmond simply cannot afford to let a super-rich American thug trumple all over him. Neither can Scotland. And neither can the UK.

So the crazy CATS will be getting their thirty pieces of silver - and then some.

That, as we all know, is the going rate for betrayal.