Has there ever been a better time to be alive?

The recent United Nations climate summit in Dubai ended up becoming a carnival of gloom. Speakers competed to paint the bleakest outlook for the world. But while it’s right to focus on the challenges that lie ahead, the doomsday narrative risks obscuring all the progress we have made. ‘Records are now being broken so often that we are perhaps becoming immune to what they are really telling us,’ said King Charles in his address to COP28. The King makes a fair point, one that it is worth elaborating on as the year draws to a close.

A few weeks ago, for example, it emerged that Britain has become the first G20 country to have halved its carbon emissions. This went entirely unreported – as is often the case with good environmental news – but it is a landmark. Technology, capitalism and competition have allowed us to extract more power from less fuel in a cleaner way. The average household uses 40 per cent less energy than in the mid-1990s. This has many benefits: the air in our cities, for example, is the cleanest since records began.