In the Telegraph this week, some sad sack ‘controversialist’ did a hatchet job on the talented comedian David Mitchell for being a “uniform Lefty bore”. Amongst the evidence for this conclusion was Mitchell’s ‘belief’ in man-made climate change. This was probably the most egregious piece of many I’ve seen recently which perceives climate change purely through the lens of the left-right political spectrum.

You know the kind of thing. Left wingers see climate change as evidence that capitalism is evil, and right wingers think the science has been fabricated purely to allow lefties to argue that.

But climate change is not about politics. It’s about the laws of physics – simple thermodynamics applied to a complex system of feedbacks.

On top of that, I think the whole left/right/climate argument is flawed. Socialism/communism has proved just as effective at destroying the planet as neoliberalism. I was inspired to dedicate my life to sustainability by seeing the destructive legacy of the Soviet Union, China is hardly an eco-paradise and the Venezuelan economy is based on oil, to name but three. There is no evidence that a swing to the left will, in itself, lead to sustainability, whatever Naomi Klein tells us. In my opinion, the only thing hard left greens achieve is to give the right an excuse not to act.

My whole green jujitsu approach to engagement is to translate sustainability into the language of your target audience. For this reason, I find a good right-of-centre argument for tackling climate change much more exciting than than a left wing one as it is the right who we have to bring on board. There is little point in preaching to the choir.

UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond gave a quite brilliant right-of-centre speech on climate change this week. He evoked the leadership given by Margaret Thatcher on climate change in the late 1980s, and Ronald Reagan’s action on the hole in the ozone layer before her. By co-opting the memory of the twin gods of neoliberalism to the climate cause, he pressed the buttons of every right winger. He then proceeded to make the economic case for tackling climate change, driving home the message.

The proof of course will be in the pudding. The one person that Hammond needs to bring on board is the UK Chancellor George Osborne who is busy switching subsidies for clean fuels to fossil fuels (despite the latter already enjoying a 4:1 advantage of Government largesse) and blowing public money on an over-priced nuclear reactor. If he can bring Osborne on board, Hammond will make himself a real climate hero.