It was March 2019 when 55 charities wrote to the Charity Commission and the attorney general asking them to seek an urgent ruling from the courts on whether charities ought always to exclude investments that conflict with their charitable aims. Specifically, the charities were keen to clarify the rules on investing in companies whose activities contribute to dangerous global warming.

Since then, we’ve seen devastating fires in California, Brazil and Australia, flooding in Venice and eastern Africa, and a heatwave in Greenland. Sensors at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii detected higher concentrations of carbon monoxide in the Earth’s atmosphere than at any point in the last three million years. The UK government declared a climate emergency – though without attaching any binding policy commitments. And a UN report warned that even if countries meet their Paris Agreement pledges to cut emissions, planetary warming will be more than twice the 1.5°C target.