There are many grating things about the recent surge in eco-apocalypse porn. The first is the sheer opportunism, the speed with which every natural calamity – regardless of whether it can actually be linked to climate change – is politicised and exploited. Every fire and flood is turned into a horror film that the West’s bored middle classes then use to promote their drab green agenda. Then there’s the way apocalypse porn lets various political establishments off the hook. Treating every disparate natural event as proof of the existence of an all-seeing, all-punishing global monster called ‘climate change’ absolves local politicians of responsibility for tackling natural crises.

For example, if the Greek fires are down to the hubristic excesses of modern man, then we don’t need to talk about EU austerity and how it impacted on the Greek public sector, including its capacity to fight fires. It’s not Brussels’ fault – it’s your fault for driving to Sainsbury’s in a diesel car twice a week. Likewise, Erdogan’s failure to prepare for the wildfires in Turkey gets buried by the global media’s obsessive belief that every fire is a warning from Gaia. And the fact that the floods in Europe seem to have been exacerbated by poor planning is just casually pushed aside, buried under the guff about Poseidon’s wrath and End Times. No wonder German ministers are happy to talk up the eco-apocalypse – it takes attention away from their own failures of vision and infrastructure.