There can be no more Panglossian document than the UK international climate finance results published by the government last month. Apparently, since 2011 UK taxpayers have helped prevent 145 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, given 33 million people improved resistance to climate change and saved 717,000 hectares of ecosystem. How proud we can all feel of ourselves.

Except, that is, we are beginning to learn a bit more about how our money – £11.6 billion of it between 2021/22 and 2025/26 alone – is being spent. There is £52 million, for example, on a road driven through the rainforest in Guyana and millions for a rewilding scheme in Uganda which involved subsistence farmers being thrown off the land. In Brazil, federal prosecutors have demanded that 12 million tonnes of carbon c

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