‘I’ve knocked on hundreds, literally thousands of doors, and had tens of thousands of conversations with voters… and I just don’t have conversations about climate change.’

So said an anonymous MP, despairing at the British public’s lack of interest in climate change. He was quoted in a 2018 report by the environmental think-tank, the Green Alliance. The findings were stark. Ten years after the UK had passed the Climate Change Act, which commits the British government to stringent, legally binding decarbonisation targets, there was no sign of any public enthusiasm for climate policy. Politicians across the political spectrum were all in agreement that draconian measures should be taken to mitigate global warming. But they had not brought the electorate along with them. ‘For the overwhelming majority of people’, the report warned, ‘climate change is a non-issue’.