That's a deal that came to an end with the extraordinary events of the past few days. From now on, sanctions-busting tankers heading out from the Venezuelan coast will be turned back by acting President Delcy Rodriguez, if not by the American navy, to the huge frustration of China's leaders.

Whether we like it or not, the rest of the world's obsession with climate change is fading – and with it fades any realistic prospect of artificially pricing fossil fuels out of the energy market through carbon taxes. The race to dominate the artificial intelligence industry, with its massive demands for electricity, is being fuelled not by windmills but by gas in America and coal in China.

Instead of buying exorbitantly expensive liquefied gas from America and Qatar, Britain must tap some of our own, rich, reserves of shale gas under Lincolnshire and Lancashire. Rather than buying oil produced in the North Sea by Norwegians, we need to drill for oil in our own sector of that same sea. Instead, thanks to the exorbitant cost of wind and solar energy, our industrial electricity prices are four times those of America.

This, plus the crackdown on gas boilers, petrol cars, holidays and beef are not just a drag on our living standards, they are lacerations of economic self-harm. The green dogma is destroying our competitiveness, removing our steel, car, chemical and oil industries and excluding us from the race for an AI industry. As Venezuela reminds us, the world economy relies on fossil fuels now, and probably well into the future. It's a lesson we can't afford to ignore.