MY original topic for today was to have been another absolute howler, that being the World Coal Association's recent rebranding of itself as 'FutureCoal: The Global Alliance for Sustainable Coal,' and no, I am not making that up; that is a thing that actually happened. However, my morning news review yesterday (Wednesday) threw that plan into complete disarray by presenting a more important story that, in hindsight, is not at all surprising but nevertheless comes as a sickening shock.

When Dubai in the United Arab Emirates was selected a couple of years ago as the host city for this year's COP28 climate summit, the choice raised a few eyebrows. Given that the chief villain, if there is one, in the global climate emergency is the oil and gas industry, it did seem more than a little contradictory to hold the annual climate talks in a place that, were it not for enormous oil and gas reserves, would be home to little else but sand fleas and subsistence fishermen.