It’s 2022. India’s population reaches almost one and a half billion, relegating China to second place, and it will take some getting used to.

Indeed if we add in Pakistan and Bangladesh, that is the Indian subcontinent landmass before 1948, there would be another 300 million plus, and it’s still growing steadily, unlike China which has a mainly stable population.

We are used to thinking of China as the source of many of the excessive CO2 generating items we buy, from cameras, computers, electrical goods, shoes and trainers, to clothes and toys, and indeed many UK firms, like Hornby and Burberry, have moved production there.

No doubt this will continue though there’ll be more competition from other Asian countries, like Dyson vacuum cleaners made in Malaysia, but now India will have a larger role. Indeed most of us receive frequent phone calls from UK companies outsourced to India and global communications, added to impressive internet and computer skills, are the obvious commercial strength.

However India is more than that and demonstrates her understanding of the carbon dioxide problem, as she will still only rank third in global figures after China and the USA with a particularly low annual production per person, at less than two tonnes.

This compares with China six, Australia 18, the USA 19 with Qatar 40 plus tonnes. Our own eight tonnes should be two tonnes higher, but we add them on to China’s total, which in reality is less than six, as they make many of our goods.

Until recently much of the Indian electricity has been produced from coal fired power stations, but that’s now being rapidly revised with the aim to produce 60 per cent of electricity from cheaper renewable solar, wind and hydro electricity by 2027, apart from planting hundreds of millions of trees.

Now that’s the way to behave.