The Republican victory in the midterm elections was a triumph for its strategy of sustained vilification of the president and obstruction of his policies. The result will have big implications for the future of the US. But it also has implications for the rest of humanity. This is inevitable, given the role of the US as the world’s largest and most technologically advanced economy, guarantor of the open world economy and greatest military power. But the US is also the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and among the highest emitters per head.

The most important consequence of this election may therefore be to bury what little hope remained of getting to grips with the risk of dangerous climate change. Countries cannot keep bits of the atmosphere to themselves. Moving off the world’s current trajectory is a collective task. Without US will and technological resources, the needed shift will not happen. Other countries will not – indeed cannot – compensate.

Many Republicans seem to have concluded man-made climate change is a hoax. If so, this is quite a hoax. Just read the synthesis report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One is asked to imagine that thousands of scientists have put together a complex fabrication in order to promote their not particularly remunerative careers, in the near certainty they will be found out. This hypothesis makes no sense.