Global warming is spiralling out of control at the same time as our politicians try to figure out the best way to “maximise the economic recovery of oil and gas”.

These aren’t just regular politicians doing this, these are politicians on the Energy and Climate Change Committee.

Yesterday in parliament, fossil fuel representatives explained that the discovery of new oil reserves was at a sixty-year low. “The revenues have gone out of the industry,” cried one chief executive. Some companies are “fighting for survival”, cried another.

With no sense of irony, the Chief Executive of Oil and Gas UK proclaimed that a lack of exploration for oil and gas was “not sustainable”.

Some people would argue that an unsustainable fossil fuel industry might be a price worth paying for a sustainable planetary atmosphere and its human civilisation. But not the British government.

Our government seem determined to make sure that every last drop of oil and every last gasp of gas is violently extracted from within our planet and burned. Which is why in January they funded seismic surveys in the hope of uncovering more of it.

While the government explicitly subsidises oil and gas with one hand, with the other hand it crushes subsidies for wind and solar and scraps zero-carbon home rules.

If they find more oil or gas, none of it will be kept in the ground. Our planet’s atmosphere might spiral into collapse, but it will be good for the economy.