The bulk of world scientific opinion has it that climate change represents by far the greatest threat to the future of humankind. Or more precisely, that global warming does, writes David Adams.
Some 30 years ago eminent scientists were also warning of a progressive change in the world's climate - except then they were claiming that we were about to enter a new Ice Age. Still, having no specialist knowledge of these things ourselves, we have no option but to again take the experts' word for it.
Unless they have a further change of mind, we must accept that global warming is happening, that it is our fault, and that we have little time left to do something about it. Actually, for most of us, doing the best you can to preserve the natural resources of the planet is now accepted as the proper thing to do.
In this respect, it matters very little to us if global warming is fact or fiction, a natural occurrence or the fault of humankind or, for that matter, even a life or death issue.
The public is worried enough about the continued pollution of our rivers and oceans and the worldwide decimation of our flora and fauna to try to do something about it.
If only all of that were so.
The truth is, little more than a tiny minority of the world's population actually gives a damn about the environment and global warming.
It is only we, the affluent few fortunate enough to live in the West, who can afford to care. The vast majority of the world's citizens are too busy with a daily struggle for survival to spend precious time worrying about ecological niceties. Try lecturing the herdsman, or those who have to gather firewood several times a day for heating and cooking, on the evils of deforestation.
Try telling those who must hunt daily for their food about the need for animal conservation or the dangers of over-fishing. They, and many, many millions like them, have much more immediate concerns than whether the planet might be burnt to a crisp or reduced to a giant landfill site at some time in the distant future. For them, the future is now.
This, of course, is no fault of the scientists. They can only comment on matters relating to their field of expertise, inform us of what they think they know, and suggest a solution.
However, our western governments are a different matter altogether. Although to the forefront in pointing up the dangers of global warming, they have been far less forthcoming about the limitations to tackling it. They know, for example, that for most people today basic survival must always trump what are, for them, petty concerns over pollution.
The West is also, in many respects, guilty of rank hypocrisy. In a classic example of do as I say and not as I have done, countries that have built enormous wealth on the back of two centuries of unfettered industrialisation have now the gall to lecture developing nations, such as China and India, on the need for control on carbon emissions.
Worse still, our governments appear to be using warnings about the climate to deflect western attention away from more certain and immediate threats to our existence. They are only too aware that, whatever the theoretical dangers posed by global warming, it is far from being the most serious issue facing us today.
The ever widening gulf between rich nations and poor, and the inter-related battle between secularism and religious fundamentalism, are bigger and more urgent problems that must be resolved if we are going to survive long enough to suffer any ill-effects from a rise in global temperatures.
At the root of it all, and an issue our governments are keen to avoid because they should be doing a lot more to tackle it, is poverty.
An ill division of the world's riches has a few nations enjoying incredible wealth while the vast majority of citizens exist in abject poverty and look on in envy and resentment.
Poverty is, above all else, the engine that drives religious fundamentalism. Those who have known nothing but hardship and deprivation in this world will more readily cling to a notion that just reward awaits them in the next.
They can more easily be convinced that those they already envy and resent are mortal enemies of them and their co-religionists. It is hardly surprising that many feel they have nothing to lose in this life and are attracted to violent actions that have the added appeal of an immediate shortcut to paradise.
In their greed and irrespective of all the dangers it poses, our western governments prefer the present perversely inequitable situation, even to the point of seeking to stymie the development of potential economic competitors, rather than do anything other than pay lip service to tackling world poverty.
Until they do make a genuine effort to tackle it, world poverty will remain as the single biggest threat to our existence, and the single biggest obstacle to tackling global warming.