Ranked 48 out of 56 on climate: Report puts us in a pariah category

Many years ago, when the full scale of the institutionalised child sexual abuse became apparent, we recoiled in horror and shame. Our betrayal of the most vulnerable was so great we were transfixed; caught like rabbits in headlights, we could not turn away from but knew we had to if our obligation to protect the weakest was to have any integrity. As our initial shock eased, international news organisations came to report on how the island of saints and scholars had become the island of child rape and torture. We were, again, horrified but this time at how those we saw as our peers saw us. The appalling facts meant we had to wait for the storm to pass. Our indignation had to be silent.

We have not reached that point on climate change yet, but the moment when news teams come here to try to discover why we are suicidally backward on climate collapse cannot be too far away. Their brief will be simple: Explain how a rich country, one that imagines itself caring and well-educated, can be ranked worst in EU on climate action and, in a shaming double whammy, be graded among worst in the world. Those news teams will try to understand why a society whose affluence was built on EU solidarity is such an outlier indifferent to the gloomy warnings of today’s scientists.