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As the fossil fuel disinvestment movement gathers a pace, the loses of US oil companies have reached record levels.

At the beginning of last week, environmentalists celebrated when the largest energy infrastructure company in North America, Kinder Morgan, pulled the plug on its controversial natural gas pipeline which had been proposed through parts of Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire, called NorthEast Energy Direct.

History will be made today at a ceremony in New York when countries start to formally sign the Paris climate agreement, which was initially approved in December last year.

As the saying goes: the stone age did not end due to the lack of stones and the oil age will not end due to lack of oil. It will end due to climate change and the coming clean energy revolution.

I want to tell you a story about a man called Bob. Bob runs a large multinational oil company. His company has just recorded its worst ever record loss of $6.5 billion. He has sacked some 7,000 workers, ruining lives and ripping up livelihoods. His company has suffered a torrid, horrible year. His share price fell 13 per cent over the last year. His competitors all did much better.

“Do we really care so little about the Earth on which we live that we don’t wish to protect one of its greatest wonders from the consequences of our behaviour?”

It is a significant legal ruling in what has been described as the “most important lawsuit on the planet right now”.

“The typical American male devotes more than 1,000 hours a year to his car”, so wrote the Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich way back in 1974.

In our latest briefing, we unravel why U.S. government agencies are setting themselves up for climate failure when assessing the climate impact of fossil fuel decisions, and what they should do about it.