Coal supplies a quarter of the world’s energy, oil and gas account for a half, and renewables – in spite of vast subsidies everywhere they are built – comprise just 7 per cent.

While Germany is being ridiculed for re-opening coal mines, even tearing down a wind farm to do so, it is claiming this is only a temporary departure from its decarbonisation transition.

Such assurances are not being given by the fastest-growing developing nations.

Indeed, Bloomberg reports, regretfully, that coal is making a comeback almost everywhere except in the US, which has stacks of gas, and Russia which, denied its European markets, has an...