It’s not ideal that six people can doom the world to runaway planet heating.

The supreme court’s ruling that the US government could not use its existing powers to phase out coal-fired power generation without “clear congressional authorization” quickly ricocheted around the world among those now accustomed to looking on in dismay at America’s seemingly endless stumbles in addressing global heating.

The decision “flies in the face of established science and will set back the US’s commitment to keep global temperature below 1.5C”, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, in reference to the internationally agreed goal to limit global heating before it becomes truly catastrophic, manifesting in more severe heatwaves, floods, droughts and societal unrest.

Six people – three of them given the job by a moronic deranged criminal.

Biden’s promise to end oil and gas drilling on public land has been unfulfilled, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused gasoline prices to leap, prompting the president to urge oil companies to ramp up production, to the horror of climate campaigners.

And lots of us breathers, too.

The president has vowed that the US will cut its emissions in half by 2030 but this goal, and America’s waning international credibility on climate change, will be lost without both legislation from Congress and strong executive actions.

And it’s blindingly obvious that neither of those is going to happen.