All this winter, until New Year’s Eve, and for the first time since I started keeping llamas, Vera, Ann and Lynn were happily grazing on grass that was still growing. They were managing without hay. Something seems to be happening to our climate.

Global warming alarmism is not for me. I’ve never pitched in, fists flying, to this fray. One would want scientific expertise or new information – and I lack both. I’ve grown to distrust the wildly divergent prophecies of the climate change warriors as much as I distrust their adversaries in the ‘nothing to worry about’ camp.

Whether or not it turns out to be a fiction, the scare it has given us is worth the cost and anxiety

So for the purposes of this column, let’s sideline that discussion after summarising as follows: climate change does appear to be a fact; it may be cyclical or a fixed trend; many think it’s linked to carbon dioxide emissions; others think the link, if there is one, is too hard to measure with the accuracy that would justify forswearing the convenience of cheap fossil fuels.

But I have a different case to make. I submit that whether or not the climate ‘emergency’ turns out to be a fiction, the scare it has given us is worth the cost and the anxiety. Fossil fuels are bad for us: bad for our health, bad for our domestic politics, bad for the West’s own future security, and bad (because finite) for prospects of a sustainable future for our planet. We have reason enough,........

© The Spectator