I read a statistic the other day that I have not been able to get out of my mind.

I learnt, with a combination of shame and fury, that the average Brit emits more carbon in two weeks than the citizens of seven African nations emit in an entire year, and that someone in the UK will take just five days to emit the same carbon as someone in Rwanda does in an entire year.

Oxfam revealed these outrageous facts in January, as it called on the UK government to “lead the way in addressing the staggering injustice at the heart of the climate emergency” as it takes up the presidency of the 2020 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), to be held in Glasgow from November 9 to 19.

The truly infuriating aspect of all this is that though African countries emit the least carbon, they are the most affected by the consequences of climate change. As I write this, a plague of locusts of biblical proportions is wiping out crops in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. Billions of the critters have spawned as a result of climate change, and the prospect of a devastating famine in East Africa is very real.

In 2018 Cape Town nearly ran out of water, while climate change has increased displacement and migration in Sub-Saharan Africa for several million people.

It is injudicious that those who emit the most carbon remain, for the most part, immune to climate change’s consequences, and this while the majority of those in the rich world claim to be worried about climate change.