Writer and activist Dee Searle

ON Saturday a steady trickle of visitors braved the weather to attend Camden Council’s Community Climate Action Day at the Greenwood Centre in Kentish Town to check out a creative array of stalls and activities, including a local seasonal fruit and veg scheme, how to repair broken electronic items, and getting started with making our homes more energy efficient.

However, according to one stallholder, “The event was not that well attended, average at best. And most of the faces were familiar.”

Full disclosure: I was among the no-shows (although in my defence I had a hospital appointment and family commitments).

Full marks to the council for their initiative. But given growing evidence about the impact of climate change, what would it take to turn that trickle of interest into a global warming-scale flood?

The Met Office reported last week that England and Wales had their respective warmest Februarys on record and the south of England experienced its wettest February since measurements began in 1836. Many parts of southern England recorded well over twice the average rainfall.

January was the warmest on record globally, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The average air temperature over the past year was 1.52°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. This is the threshold that scientists predict could send the Earth’s fragile interconnected weather systems spiralling out of control, causing threats to food and water supplies, increasing insect-borne diseases and drowning small islands and low-lying countries under rapidly rising sea levels.

Yet there are few signs of mass mobilisation to tackle this existential problem. In fact, a whole academic research discipline has developed into “the psychology of climate change disavowal”. The scale of the problem is just too big for many people to get involved.

Plus it’s difficult to know how to start.

Should we focus on making climate-friendly changes to our own lives, such as giving up meat or long-distance air travel?

Should we get involved in community-level initiatives, such as protecting local nature reserves? But will any of this make a big enough difference?

Even eye-catching protests by organisations such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil don’t seem to be having much impact on the actions of governments and the main generators of climate change-inducing carbon.

One of the problems is that politicians are guided by issues that will get them elected and there just isn’t enough widespread public pressure to tackle global warming and ecological destruction.

The Conservatives and Labour are too busy trading insults ahead of this year’s general election to consider something as beneficial as protecting our environment for future generations.

The Labour Party famously earlier this year abandoned its pledge to spend £28billion a year on climate transition.

Meanwhile chancellor Jeremy Hunt axed climate change from the Bank of England’s key priorities in this year’s annual recommendations to the governor.

And its recent Biodiversity Net Gain policy, launched last month, is full of loopholes (according to experts) and would actually reduce the area of open green space.

Camden Council’s latest draft of its new local plan is well-meaning but too puny to halt climate damage caused by developers and the council’s own housing estate redevelopment schemes.

Even the Green Party is downplaying the environment in this May’s London mayor and assembly elections in favour of more vote-winning topics such as housing and crime.

In fact, the Greens’ ability to campaign generally has taken a hit by being found guilty last month of unlawfully discriminating against former deputy leader Dr Shahrar Ali by sacking him as spokesperson because of his belief that biological sex cannot be equated with gender identity.

There are at least three similar court cases in the pipeline and the Greens have cut funding to local parties and campaigning because of mounting legal costs and the need to pay damages.

So it comes back to us ordinary Camden residents to make a stand.

We can ask the council to strengthen climate policies in the local plan.

We can join organisations such as Vote Climate, who will be putting pressure on political parties to make environmental commitments in their general election manifestos.

And we can try to make our politicians watch the brilliant videos that pair leading comedians with climate scientists.

In the words of The Great British Bake Off host Jo Brand: “If people like me have to get involved, you know we are in deep shit.”

• Local plan consultation: https://newcamdenlocalplan.commonplace.is/

• Vote Climate: https://voteclimate.uk/

• Comedy climate videos: https://www.climatesciencebreakthrough.com/projects