“Climate change is the most existential threat of our time,” announced the title character in the latest episode of the celebrated CBS drama Madam Secretary.

In Madam Secretary, renewables are the future while gas (the fuel which, more than any other, has driven America’s energy and manufacturing and stockmarket revival) is the enemy.

That’s why in its latest episode, titled ‘Thin Ice,” and deconstructed here by Newsbusters, the antagonist is a slippery Texas gas baron named Chip Harding (Kevin O’Rourke). The good guys are lead by an enviro-activist called Bella and, of course, our plucky Secretary of State heroine Elizabeth “Bess” Adams McCord who bravely says, “No” to Chip’s evil, clean, abundant energy.

The set up is that the State Department is taking part in an international Expo in which it hopes to promote the virtues of renewable energy. But because of budget cuts, they are now dependent on funding from gas baron chip who — not unreasonably, you might think — is keen to promote his industry at the Expo. Chip is also interested in a parallel plot line concerning the economic development of the disputed territory in the Arctic (where naturally he would like to drill).

Here, as per Newsbusters, is what happens next:

After the State Department helps an environmentalist group get out of jail and the leader publicly denounces companies that “suppress the truth” about global warming and wish to “poison the planet,” Harding calls up Madam Secretary Elizabeth (Téa Leoni) and demands the administration publicly support drilling in the Arctic Circle, threatening to pull back his funding.