One observer said out loud what others only hinted at: ‘With raging wildfires, floods and pandemics, it seems like End Times – and it’s our own damned fault.’ You couldn’t have asked for a better illustration of the regressive nature of 21st-century environmentalism than this medieval self-flagellation that so many in the Smart Set engaged in this year.

This eco-hysteria, this dogmatic belief that modernity is setting the planet ablaze and unleashing disease, was further codified at COP26 in Glasgow. The great and the good arrived in their private jets and limousines to gnash their teeth over the horribleness of industrialised society and to draw up a plan for phasing out coal and other ‘dirty’ energies.

Not surprisingly, nations like India and China, whose populations haven’t yet reached such a luxurious level of development that they can sit around for days on end bemoaning the eco-impact of human extravagance, were not so keen on this neo-colonial attempt by Western elites to virtually criminalise certain forms of energy.