WE should never have called it ‘climate change’. With hindsight, we got it all so wrong – even down to the name.

This isn’t just ‘climate change’ – this is the human race walking towards collective suicide with our eyes wide shut. ‘Climate change’ sounds too passive, too inconsequential, too blameless.

We’re on the cusp of a ‘human mass death event’, of ‘mass species extinction’ across the animal and plant kingdoms, of a ‘planetary systems collapse’. Those names would have been better, perhaps – maybe they’d have terrorised us into action, because now it’s almost too late.

The question isn’t ‘will’ climate change happen – it’s happening. We’re in the middle of it. The question is how bad will it get. How many people will die, how many species will be destroyed? How devastating will the social and political consequences be of what we’re now experiencing? Wars? Mass migrations? Rising extremism? Who knows where we go from here.

The United Nations warned yesterday that we’re at “code red for humanity” and it’s our fault. As if that needed to be said yet again for the criminally negligent liars and idiots who’ve denied climate change so long. Will this latest warning change anything? Will it shake humanity out of our dumb torpor, our instance on living quite literally for today and to hell with tomorrow and our children?

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I, for one, doubt it. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says if we act now – right now, not tomorrow or next year, but today – then there’s hope we can stabilise the climate and avoid catastrophe.

Abandonment of hope is a terrible sin – but how can optimism continue when we look at our political leaders. The UN climate summit is bound for Glasgow soon. Who really believes it’ll be anything other than a greenwashed talking shop for politicians and CEOs to pretend they care or have answers. Neither Nicola Sturgeon nor Boris Johnson – or politicians anywhere for that matter – have any right to claim leadership at Cop26 (what a stupidly bureaucratic, passionless title for the most important summit in history).

Johnson is an oaf, a man consumed by ambition who’s incapable of real leadership. I expect nothing from him when it comes to the Glasgow summit, except phoney soundbites and electoral grandstanding. Sturgeon, on the other hand, is a woman who I believe has her heart in the right place, which is why her failure to show leadership around the climate is even more galling and egregious. Nobody should be surprised when the wicked let you down, but when the decent fail you, it’s cruel.

Sturgeon has tried to project the idea that the SNP cares about the climate. I once believed it did. I now think we’ve been lied to on a grand scale. The Cambo oilfield issue has shown Sturgeon’s administration in its true light. It’s not committed to addressing climate change, it’s in hock to the oil and gas industry. It has no answers, it has only false promises.

The Herald:

The chance meeting between young climate activists and the First Minister at the weekend was very telling. One young woman, concerned over Cambo getting the okay off Shetland, pushed Sturgeon to oppose the oilfield; another spoke of the real fear she feels for her future.

Sturgeon’s response was dismissive and high handed. At best she mouthed platitudes, and was clearly desperate to get away from her young questioners. Cambo “isn’t an issue for the Scottish Government”, Sturgeon said.

Well it is, First Minister. Offshore licensing may well be reserved but you and your ministers have tongues in your heads – use them. You’re keen to shout your mouths off over almost every issue in which the Scottish Government finds itself powerless, but not on Cambo. The hypocrisy stinks. It’s tantamount to gaslighting the Scottish people.

Cambo is totemic because it symbolises all that’s wrong with the SNP and its duplicitous claims about caring for the environment. Just think what Cambo means? We’re proposing to open another massive oilfield – as the planet starts to burn around us. If my house was on fire, and I started to throw petrol over the cooker, you’d rightly get me committed.

The SNP has stubbornly refused to take a position on Cambo. Yet its politicians, including the First Minister, will – sure as the sun rises – use Cop26 to pretend they care about the climate. Johnson, it should be added, even had the audacity to pretend that he wasn’t aware of Cambo. The liar.

I have voted SNP in the past – after I gave up on Labour – but that party will never see another vote of mine again unless it takes a stand which matters on the climate.

What’s even more nauseating is that the SNP is about to drag the Green Party in front of it as a shield. The Greens are more than likely about to enter into a deal with nationalists which will see the likes of Patrick Harvie, perhaps, or Lorna Slater, get a ministerial seat.

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‘Look,’ the SNP will be able to say, ‘of course we care, we’ve got the Greens as best buddies.’ One worries that the Greens – who must also carry the can for not getting their central message to break through with the public – are about to become convenient patsies.

The only folk who seem to have an opinion are those outside of power, like Keir Starmer. At least he’d the gumption to say Cambo shouldn’t go ahead. But it’s easy to take a stand when you’re not in power. It takes guts to take hard decisions in office.

However, at the bottom of this whole, horrible, mess that we now find ourselves in, there’s us: you and I and all the other ordinary people out there. Forget the politicians for a while – they’ll do whatever it takes to get elected, spin us any lie and say what they think we want them to say.

We’ve failed. We got this useless, lying bunch because we voted for them. And we voted for them because we didn’t care enough about the planet and the future of humanity to put the right people in office. We can look forward to explaining that to our grandchildren.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald