As a succinct assessment by the Global Warming Policy Foundation points out, the Chinese government is concerned much more by internal pressures than external opinion. It needs to maintain China’s economic growth. A senior official recently put it this way: “All our policies, measures and actions for addressing climate change are conducive to national development mode transformation and structural adjustment, thus promoting the quality and efficiency of our economic growth. That is an internal requirement for the sustainable development of our country.”

In other words, China will act in its own interests. Internally, that will mean improving energy efficiency, currently one-third the level of the United States. Doing so would reduce CO2 emissions and the energy costs to China’s economy. Externally, China is posing as the champion of developing countries in their climate change negotiations with the industrial world.

Whatever one’s view of climate change, it is impossible that COP21, or anything that flows from it, will hold carbon emissions to the levels and in the manner required by environmentalists. And that is a good thing: why should poor countries continue to be denied cheap electricity and economic development, while richer nations hamstring their own economies?

In the real energy world, the prices of oil, coal and gas have dropped sharply in recent years. This is partly policy — Saudi Arabia’s decision not to support high oil prices by cutting its own production — but mainly it is due to the great advance brought about by fracking for hydrocarbons. This slashed the costs of producing oil and gas, and in America cheap gas undercut coal which accordingly became even cheaper and flooded the world market. The world outside America is still catching up with this fundamental shift, but the fact is that the cost of hydrocarbons has been cut and will not return to historic levels.

Fracking did not come about overnight: work in the field and in the laboratory took 40 years. There is every reason to hope for technological breakthroughs in cleaner forms of energy as well. Given the rate of advance in science generally, and the amount of money being poured into clean energy research around the world, a silver bullet, or a series of silver bullets, must sooner or later transform energy supply. One area of rapid advance is in electric battery research, with the prospect of large-scale electricity storage and cheaper long-range electric cars.

Lower-cost fossil fuel is a benefit to the global economy, and most particularly to poorer countries. Individual nations — and individuals — will continue to make their own decisions about supporting renewable energy, responding to changing costs and evolving technology. But the global initiative represented by COP21 is an expensively overblown irrelevance.