They’re better people than me

So what are we to think of the extinction people, the ones who’ve clogged the beating heart of London to warn us all of climate change (as if we’d not been warned already)? They blocked the bridge at Waterloo with yoga mats and dancing classes. They moored a big pink boat on Oxford Circus and kept the hungry hordes from shopping.

Some demonstrators glued themselves to things: each other, tube trains, Buckingham Palace railings and even – these, one guesses, drew the shortest straw – to Jeremy Corbyn’s house. A group of teenagers sat gloomily at Heathrow Airport overseen by dozens of avuncular policemen. Their banner said, ‘‘Are we the final generation?’’

So what are we to make of them? Well, they’re not dissimilar to dear Israel Folau. Like him they warn us that we’re on the road to hell. The difference though is that Folau’s opinion is based on superstition. Theirs is based on science. In other words Folau is wrong and they are almost certain to be right.

The details of the hell we’re headed for are still unsettled but the broader truth’s so inescapable you’d have to be a wit as dim as Trump to miss it.

The ice is melting, seas are rising, and Bangladesh, before too long, will simply disappear, as will the climate that we know and are dependent on. And in its place there will come floods and droughts and storms and famines and the threat of ecological collapse.

And the cause of all this misery is us, or rather, in the demonstrators’ own unlovely words, our ‘‘modern consumer-focused lifestyle’’. The way we live’s destroying the way we live. And if we carry on another dozen years we’ll set a ball a-rolling that is too big to stop.

So there we have it. And what are we to do with it? Or rather, since we’ve known this truth for years, what have we done with it already, you and I? Have you, let’s say, got rid of your old petroldriven car? You have! Bravo. I haven’t, I’m afraid. One day perhaps.

Have you gone vegan yet? Oh good, how do you find it? No, I still eat meat. I like the stuff. I know, I know, one day perhaps.

Do you still fly? Oh dear, I am a dinosaur it seems. I should apologise to you and to the offspring of your offspring who will cop it.

The details of the hell we’re headed for are still unsettled ...

But I am not alone. Consider these wee islands where we live in ease and plenty. Ease and plenty come from cultivating livestock for their meat and milk and cultivating tourists for their dollars. The livestock are a greenhouse gas disaster, as are the planes that bring the tourists and their bucks. This giving up for good will not be easy.

And then there are the urban billions in Asia, Africa and South America. They’re not concerned by long-term climate change. They’re concerned by short-term staying alive. They worry about food and shelter, how to raise their children.

The thing they want is what we’ve got, our ease and plenty. You can see them marching up through Mexico in hope of it, or setting out by boat across the Med. There’s nothing they’d like more than to produce some greenhouse gases of their own. And who’s to say them nay?

The simple truth, it seems to me, is we’re too many, and natural history suggests a reckoning of sorts will have to come. Meanwhile all I can say with any certainty about the dancers on the bridge and Mr Corbyn’s sticky guests, is that they are better people than I am.