If the US under Trump leaves a “vacuum”, already poised to fill it is China, now the world-leader in producing wind turbines and solar panels. And Harrabin ended back in India, gazing down on “the world’s biggest solar farm”, as “a spectacular monument to India’s energy policy”.

No mention of the fact that, before that Paris conference, China and India formally notified the UN that, to keep their economies growing, they intend between them to build more than 800 new coal-fired power stations; and that by 2030 – as already the world’s first and third largest emitters of CO2 – they plan to double and treble those emissions. Even by the BBC’s standards, as one expert observer put it, this farrago of “deluded groupthink was stunning”.

As always, what was striking was not just what it did say, but how much more it was careful to leave out. How this squares with the BBC’s statutory obligation to report with “accuracy and impartiality” has long been one of the puzzles of the age. But back in the real world, that dreaded “Trump card” is now fast approaching.

A new question adds to the Hinkley puzzle

One of the riddles of 2016 was why the Government changed its mind on easily the most costly nuclear power station in the world at Hinkley Point in Somerset. When Theresa May entered No 10 in July, she called in for re-evaluation a scheme which had been plagued by every kind of technical and financial problem. Its design was flawed. A similar project by the same French state-owned company EDF in Normandy is running years late and billions of euros over budget.