Well, bye, bye Donald. At midday ET, a four year feverish nightmare for Liberals like me comes to an end.

I rejoiced when Joe Biden won in November, not just for political reasons, but particularly for his pledge to rejoin the Paris Agreement “on Day One” of his Presidency. Now I didn’t take that too literally – presumably Day One involves all kinds of stuff like being given the nuclear codes and finding your stapler on top of the actual inauguration – so I would have given the guy a week, but it turns out he really meant it. And not only Paris; this afternoon Biden will sign an executive order to stop the XL Pipeline project and oil/gas prospecting in national monuments. Wow.

This sends a powerful signal that the world’s biggest economy is rejoining the rest of the world in decarbonisation. As always, the proof will be in the pudding, but this is a huge statement of intent. I declared 2021 as the Year of Sustainability, and today we will see the first big move in the right direction.