Last week a steady drone rising all year finally swelled to a crescendo. Talking up what Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, described to the City’s leading insurers as the “catastrophic impacts of climate change,” the world’s great and good were piling in on all sides.

The Pope was supposed to be at it in his addresses to the UN and the US Congress. Presidents Obama and Hollande were at it, as was David Cameron with his offer of £5.8 million of UK aid money to support the cause. And the Prince of Wales wrote a letter to Britain’s top judges pleading with them to do all they can to bring about what he called “a Magna Carta for the Earth.”

What they are all after, of course, is that global treaty they hope to see signed at the UN’s mammoth climate conference in Paris in December, legally committing the world’s 193 nations to phasing out fossil fuels, to prevent the Earth’s temperature rising by any more than 2 degrees C (35.6F).

This was why Mr. Carney was warning insurers that they stand to lose billions as fossil fuels are banned and shares in coal and gas become worthless. This was why Mr. Cameron upped the UK’s contribution to the UN’s “Green Climate Fund” to just under £6 million, to help countries such as India and China to build solar farms and “roll out mobile banking.”

And this was what the Pope was widely billed to be calling for in America, except that, when he got there, he didn’t once mention “climate change” in his speech to Congress, and at the UN included only one sentence on the Paris treaty.

Read the article “Why the UN Climate Deal is Already a Dead Duck” on telegraph.co.uk.