The ubiquitous COP 26 coverage makes it impossible to deny our out of control climate catastrophe cat is definitely out of the bag, that decades of ignoring increasingly urgent warnings have cost us dearly, and that the scale of investment, cooperation and levelling required in response is enormous but essential for any sort of worthwhile future for humanity.

The good news is that collectively we know what we should be doing, and that we could still enjoy a reasonable quality of life if we start making the changes required.

The bad news is it is already too late for many people and other species, and the inertia in both our political and and climate systems means more death, destruction and displacement is on the way, whatever happens at Glasgow.

Poor decisions have already produced a disastrous 1.2C rise above pre-industrial levels of average atmospheric temperature, resulting in the undeniably increasingly frequent ferocious natural reactions which include routinely record-breaking colder winters, wetter springs, summer heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, storms, landslides and fertile soil loss — which in turn increasingly impacts global food production, shortages, and prices, regional conflicts and mass migration of people.

And these are still the good times compared to what will happen as the temperature rises, and that rise is on course for temperatures which will make it impossible to run our economies and societies as they are today, even if the current woefully inadequate pledges to act are ever honoured.

The Covid pandemic did much more to help us to briefly reduce consumption and emissions than the broken promises and failed policies did.

Developed countries didn’t keep the promise made to release $100bn annually by 2020 for mitigation and adaptation measures, and not much action was taken on the inadequate 2015 Paris conference commitments to bigger and faster carbon emissions cuts in order to stay below catastrophic 2 or ideally1.5C rise.

Our own government’s flaws also include the new subsidy for short flights, the continuing huge subsidy for discredited biomass burning at Drax, the refusal to stop new North Sea fossil fuel extraction, spending another £27 billion on roads, spending well over £100 billion on HS2, and not investing in required proven safer and cleaner measures like geothermal and tidal energy.

Our national, local and other nations’ politicians can and must do better in response to our existential emergency, and so must we.

On the Island, we could at least be more self-sufficient in energy and food.

We are well-placed to take advantage of sun, sea, and wind power, and any keen drillers could go for geothermal energy rather than the fossil fuel folly recently requested despite the global advice to the contrary.

Here are some things we could have:

1 Insulating and building properly to reduce costs and energy demand.

2 Support community agriculture farms and Incredible Edible public space food growing.

3 Public and private open spaces for nature.

4 Communal composting.

5 An abattoir.

6 Repair cafes.

7 Reduce car ownership and use with vehicle and cycle pools and increased use of more frequent and affordable public transport.

8 Teach skills to meet more of our needs locally.

9 Be more active, productive and mutually supportive.

10 Create essential long term jobs.

The need for immediate drastic local, national, and global action and major policy and investment changes to end our suicidal behaviour is long overdue.

There is still a huge investment and action gap to plug if we really are serious about getting on with saving lives, livelihoods, economies, and the nature we all need to support us and other species.

The cost of failure is far greater than the cost of investing and changing the way we live.