We have nothing to pay reparations for when it comes to climate change - Bill Carmichael

Humanity is “on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator”, he raged, before going on to warn of total catastrophe and a breakdown of society.

“We can sign a climate solidarity pact, or a collective suicide pact,” he added with bloodcurdling emphasis.

Phew! His scriptwriter must have gulped down a triple espresso before penning this diatribe.

We’ve been told the same story for at least the last 25 years, but recently the rhetoric has been heating up far more rapidly than the planet.

The tactic from world leaders seems to be that if they scare the public witless, they will finally terrify us all into doing what we are told.

The trouble is – what exactly is that? The truth is that ordinary people, who already have a tiny carbon footprint compared to rich members of the elite like Mr Guterres, are extremely limited in the additional measures we can take.

Perhaps we could cancel the one flight a year to the Costa del Sol for a family holiday in favour of a wet weekend in Llandudno, and maybe switch off the heating entirely and shiver through the long winter. Perhaps it will buy us a few extra months of miserable existence, but is it worth it?

And I do wonder if all this endless catastrophising does any good. Has the doom laden shroud waving changed anyone’s mind, still less their behaviour?

I doubt it. From my observations the constant shrieking that “the end is nigh” produces one of two responses.

The first are people who think that things are so bad there is little we can do about it, so we might as well shrug our shoulders and enjoy what life we have left.

The second, exhibited by many young people, is to fall into the depths of despair and depression.

Take for example Cambridge graduate Louise Harris, 24, who blocked the M25 motorway by climbing an overhead gantry this week, causing untold misery to thousands of working people trying to go about their business.

The Just Stop Oil protests not only caused massive delays and inconvenience, but also directly led to one motorcycle police officer being injured after two lorries collided at a rolling roadblock. The Chief Constable of Essex, BJ Harrington, said the protests were “putting lives at risk”.

But that didn’t disturb the self-righteous narcissism of protesters like Louise, who made herself the star of the show by filming herself on the gantry sobbing: “I don’t have a future!”

Oh come off it Louise! Of course you have a future. Your white, bourgeois privilege will protect you from the consequences of your law breaking. The criminal justice system will treat you and other middle class protesters with kid gloves.

Imagine for a moment it was a gang of black young people, or working class football supporters, causing such chaos. The police would be wading in with truncheons cracking a few skulls, not politely enquiring if eco-zealots would like a sip of designer water.

And I have yet to see any reasonable explanation as to how stopping seriously ill people getting to hospital, and the emergency services attending serious accidents, are supposed to save the planet. Any ideas?

Meanwhile, back at Sharm el-Sheikh, which I am told is rather lovely at this time of year, a new scam is afoot. Developing nations are demanding trillions of pounds in “reparations” for past industrialisation from Western countries.

The charity War On Want has demanded that British taxpayers alone fork out £1 trillion – the equivalent half of everyone’s annual earnings.

Pakistan is among the first in the queue demanding a hand out because of the devastating floods that hit the country a few weeks ago, and which are apparently all our fault.

But Pakistan is a nuclear power. Perhaps if they spent their money on flood defences instead of nuclear weapons, their citizens would be better off?

And was industrialisation such a bad thing? Before the industrial revolution, in which the UK and in particular the north of England played such an important part, the vast majority of people lived short stunted lives in extreme poverty, plagued by famine and disease.

Industrialisation led to massive increases in prosperity that eventually spread to most parts of the world, resulting in dramatic improvements in longevity and health and massive decreases in child mortality and death by disease.

We have absolutely nothing to apologise for – or indeed to pay reparations for.