Sarkozy is sceptical about climate change? String him up

Prepare the stake, stoke the fire: someone has blasphemed against climate-change orthodoxy. The speech criminal in question is Nicolas Sarkozy. Yes, the former president of France, a man who really ought to know better, has wondered out loud if mankind is solely responsible for climate change. Cue media fury. Cue eco-outrage. Cue accusations that Sarkozy has gone ‘beyond the limits of decency’. Cue an atmosphere that’s almost medieval, which basically tells Sarkozy, and by extension everyone, that you cannot say things like that. You probably shouldn’t even think them.

The swiftness and ugliness of the response to Sarkozy’s comments confirm that questioning climate change is to the 21st century what querying the divinity of Christ was to the 14th. On Wednesday, Sarkozy gave a speech to businessmen, as part of the presidential primaries for the Republicans (yes, he wants to be top dog again). In the speech he said, ‘People [talk] a lot about climate change… but the climate has been changing for the past 4.5