So little time left to prevent climate crisis

Sometimes it’s very hard to see the wood from the trees, and in a society — and a world — struggling to come to terms with frightening unemployment figures, falling incomes, globalisation, and lives corralled by unmanageable debt, that, naturally, may be even more difficult.

Our economic collapse is having a chastening impact on nearly every individual and family in the country but there is an even more threatening reality that we continue to ignore, a reality that unless we confront it will have a far, far greater impact on our world, especially on our children’s ambitions, than even the most dramatic economic collapse.

Humanity’s inability — or reluctance — to develop and police a co-ordinated effort to try to limit the damage uncontrolled climate change will inflict on us is almost beyond comprehension. We have prevaricated and dodged for decades about changing our unsustainable lifestyles and have achieved so very little of real consequence that it is a little short of frightening. Science has provided irrefutable evidence that the issue becomes more and more urgent, yet those who suggest that the dramatic weather events of recent years — estimated by the UN to have cost at least $1.5tn (€1.13bn) since 2000 — are part of a natural cycle are still regarded as rational participants in the debate.