Not only will this be disastrous in itself. It will put us at an appalling competitive disadvantage with our EU partners. And it will make a complete mockery of pledges made by both the Chancellor, George Osborne, and our Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Amber Rudd.

The Fifth Carbon Budget was published last year by that very odd body, the Climate Change Committee, set up by the Climate Change Act to advise the Government on how to meet the Act’s target that, by 2050, Britain must slash its “carbon emissions” by 80 per cent on their 1990 level. Although few members of this supposedly “independent” committee, headed by Lord Deben (aka John Gummer), are experts in either climate science or energy, all are dedicated climate alarmists.

What their latest “carbon budget” proposes is that, to meet the Act’s 80 per cent target, between 2028 and 2033 Britain must raise its emissions cuts to a staggering 57 per cent. Yet this is at a time when other EU countries are at odds over whether they can agree on a much lower target of just 40 per cent by 2030, let alone whether this would be legally binding.