Money makes the world go round. To take fossil fuels out of the ground, they need money. To build a new, low carbon society, we’ll need money. And if you are looking at where the money driving climate change is coming from, one name keeps popping up.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, who own, among other things, NatWest, are Europe’s biggest fossil fuel funders. Since the UK Government bailed them out a year ago, they have poured billions of pounds of our public money into some of the most disastrous projects of earth.

RBS-NatWest are so bad that a recent report found the UK government could potentially have more impact on
climate changing pollution through it’s ownership of the bank than through all UK domestic emissions.

And as well as the sheer quantity of emissions for which they are responsible (they are involved in projects responsible for 3% of global pollution according to the same report) the bank seems to specialise in some
of the most damaging projects.

Tar sands extraction in Canada has been described as “the most destructive project on earth.” Tar sands are a kind of dirty, thick oil. The process of extracting it means leads to between 3 and 5 times the emissions of normal oil per unit energy. We have enough regular oil to deliver catastrophic climate change. If we burn Canada’s tar sands too, we have no chance. This project could also destroy an area of crucial forest carbon sink the size of England and Wales, and is stealing the land and poisoning the water of indigenous First Nations. Despite all of this, RBS have decided to pour around $14 billion into tar sands projects and companies over the last couple of years – more than any other UK bank. This is just one of the horrific projects RBS have used public money to drive.

Following the money is crucial to winning the fight against climate change. And we can’t just push for more funding for renewables: Just as having a salad with your burger doesn’t help you loose weight, renewables don’t cut emissions if they are an addition to fossil fuels rather than a replacement. We must stop funding fossil fuel extraction.

That’s why student campaigning network People & Planet, along with the World Development Movement and PLATFORM, are taking the Treasury to court. The students and young people in our network will have live with the consequences of Alistair Darling’s refusal to stop RBS driving us to the brink. We cannot, without a fight, allow him to use our money to fund the very projects endangering our future. We’ll see him in court later this month.

Guest writer is Adam Ramsay from People & Planet.