Here is something odd, however. While gas prices are soaring in Europe, in the US they have barely moved. Measured by oil barrel equivalent, US gas is at slightly over $70, compared with more than $220 on this side of the Atlantic. The difference? The Americans turn their thermostats down? They put on an extra couple of jumpers? Not exactly. In fact, they use more power than we do. But the US has a huge shale industry, with industrial scale fracking. And we don’t.

That is not because there is any shortage of shale oil and gas. In truth, there is tons of the stuff. The Bowland Shale Reserve that stretches across the North of England is estimated to hold 37 trillion cubic metres of oil and gas. There is plenty more in the Weald Basin in the South, stretching from Tunbridge Wells to Winchester, and even more in Scotland and Northern Ireland. France has vast reserves (an estimated 137 trillion cubic feet) and Poland has even more. In short, there is plenty.

The problem is no one is allowed to extract it. France decided on a total ban in 2017, a decision upheld by President Emmanuel Macron, while in this country it has been put on hold more or less indefinitely, as it has across most of the rest of Europe.

And yet, what was the real harm? The only genuine problem with fracking in the US is that for most of the last few years, prices haven’t been high enough to make it worthwhile. Otherwise, it has been completely successful. The country hasn’t been ravaged by earthquakes, nor has it damaged unborn babies, to take just a couple of the scare stories put out by its opponents. It has been just fine. 

In reality, the anti-frackers that dominated the debate make the anti-vaxxers look like pillars of scientific rationality by comparison. They peddled a toxic mixture of alarmism and conspiracy theories that were completely untroubled by evidence or reason. It is even relatively clean.