Can’t you leftists understand? Mass death is good for you. Reject the woke love of life! Welcome civilisational collapse! Watch it all burn, then dance in the ashes! This, roughly speaking, is how the dismissal of climate action is now being justified: the argument has shifted from science denial to outright nihilism.

The new incendiary spirit is exemplified by that serial arsonist Allister Heath, editor of the Sunday Telegraph. In a column in the Daily Telegraph last week, originally titled “Britain can’t stop climate change. Scrap net zero and embrace Mediterranean life”, he argued that “climate change is real” but “the war against global warming has been lost”.

This is a classic progression among those who seek to prevent a shift away from fossil fuels: first deny the problem, as the Daily and Sunday Telegraph have done for many years, then accept the problem but claim it’s now too late to act. If it is too late, it’ll be in no small part because of the deniers. So, Heath continued, we in Britain should “ditch the despicable con that is net zero, and learn to cope with … a warmer, drier, more volatile Mediterranean climate, if that is indeed to be our fate”.

Seeking to cut our emissions, he argued, shows that we suffer from an “advanced case of suicidal empathy”. I’m not qualified to diagnose people, but as a general rule, a lack of empathy, alongside callousness and an absence of guilt, is a strong indicator of a psychopath. Yes, he continued, “there will be plenty of losers, but it is pointless seeking to prevent the inevitable … Many in Britain would enjoy the kind of warmer climate predicted by........

© The Guardian