Last month at the gathering of the great but not good, the rich and infamous, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, US Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, formerly a hedge fund manager, was asked whether he agreed that calls by teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg for public and private-sector divestment from fossil fuel companies would threaten US growth.  He said it would and Mnuchin jibed: “Is she the chief economist? Who is she, I’m confused… After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us.”  Thunberg retorted: “My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up.”

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