I’m not a Catholic, but credit where credit is due: at the very least Tuesday’s arrival in America of the people’s Pope coincided with a small brace of minor miracles on the climate front.

Early on Tuesday morning, Divest-Invest announced at press conference in New York that the new total of assets in endowments and portfolios divesting from fossil fuels has topped $2.6t. That’s a 50-fold increase on last year’s number – and the year before that, we had precisely one college on board, with an endowment of $13 million.

That news might have passed somewhat unnoticed except that a handsome lad by the name of Leonardo DeCaprio announced at the same time that he was divesting his own assets and those of his charitable foundation – which for some reason seemed of interest to our planet’s news media, go figure.

I’m not a Catholic, but credit where credit is due: at the very least Tuesday’s arrival in America of the people’s Pope coincided with a small brace of minor miracles on the climate front.

And then, literally as the papal plane landed, Hillary Clinton completed her long-running metamorphosis on the Keystone pipeline. Before the pipeline review even began, many long years ago, she said she was “inclined to approve” this fuse to one of the planet’s biggest carbon bombs. But as KXL turned into the defining environmental fight of the decade, she went mum. And now, faced with the clear understanding that climate will be a defining issue in next year’s election, she came out in firm opposition to the plan.