Something freakish this way comes

One of the wisest statements I’ve ever read in my life is a quote from a favourite book, which says “People believe they want justice and wise government but, in fact, what they really want is an assurance that tomorrow will be very much like today."

We really don’t like change very much unless it’s a short change, such as a holiday, because changes can be traumatic, even the positive ones. Yet at the same time changes are exciting — especially the positive ones. But even freakish changes can be exciting.

For years now, we have got accustomed to a status quo in the world where environmentalist organisations take oil companies to court to sue them for harming the planet with their products.

There was a veritable wave of lawsuits after documents surfaced that Big Oil majors had known that their products have an adverse impact on the environment but had chosen not to share this knowledge with the public.

Some of these lawsuits failed, like the one in New York where the star villain was Exxon and it won. Others succeeded, the most notable no doubt the one in the Hague that ended with a court order for Shell to slash its emissions by 45% from 2019 levels by 2030.

The successful suits spurred predictions that they are just the beginning and we might yet see a flood of lawsuits likened to the ones that targeted Big Tobacco once the harm their products do was established as a fact once and for all. Instead we’ve just witnessed something shocking. A Big Oil major is suing Greenpeace.