Just how many warnings do we need? Just how much evidence is enough? And how long will the climate change deniers, wined and dined by the fossil fuel industry, hold sway? We are now regularly experiencing the worst storms, the hottest and driest summers, the wettest and coldest winters and the most extreme weather patterns ever recorded. Murderous floods and droughts are the new norm. Even the polar ice caps are melting in protest at what we humans are doing to the planet. Will it get even worse? Yes it will, because we continue to burn highly polluting fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate as if nothing detrimental is happening. It’s as if we are all in a collective denial.

A mass insanity seems to have gripped the planet. The planet burns and we continue to play our games. Last week the weather was so extreme down under that some matches in the Australian Open had to be put on hold. Players were collapsing from the heat. Today it was a few mickey mouse tennis matches, tomorrow it could be human life itself.

It is so tempting to simply shrug and say that global weather patterns has always produced severe events. It is all too easy to accept the slick arguments of the oil lobby – that historically, weather trends have fluctuated both ways. They argue we are merely experiencing one such fluctuation. The science is difficult so we accept the lazy option. Nature has a mind of its own and there is no point in we humans worrying. Build another coal power generating plant and hope for the best. Build another runway to expand air travel and hope for the best. Develop fracking as a low polluting alternative, and hope for the best. But we live in an age of science and hope is not a method.

I use to argue that nobody would take much notice until the eastern sea board of the United States took a hammering. Well it did and still the US is in denial. New Orleans was all but wiped off the map but still we are in denial. It was 35 degrees in sunny Adelaide last week and that was at midnight. And still we are in denial. Our oceans and rivers are dying yet we deny the need for action. Chinese cities are so polluted they are unfit for human life. But we deny there is a problem. Species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, yet we continue to defer to the climate change deniers.

There’s a powerful line in the Hollywood film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, where John Cleese, playing the wise Nobel prize scientist, tells the alien visitor that we must reach the precipice before we humans will change. A great line, but in real life who can say when we are near the precipice and when we have crossed it? An intelligent specie would err on the side of caution but no real sign of that yet. Of course it is too simplistic to talk of we humans because we humans do not have an equal voice. The one percent, to use the Occupy terminology, is fully in control of not only the worlds resources but also, critically, the world’s mass media. It is in their selfish interests to deny climate change while the ninety-nine percent pay the consequences. Like most things on this dear planet of ours, all the big questions seem to boil down to one of private property and class interests. It might just be worth re-reading my Karl Marx to see if he has any answers. Failing that I might give George Monbiot a call.