If Mother Nature built one flaw into us poor humans it’s suicidal short-termism. Maybe our brief life spans mean we struggle to see beyond the next few years, let alone the next few decades. Perhaps our secret shame is that we’re biologically programmed to simply not care what happens after we die, even to our children.

Mentally, we’re still on the savannah awaiting whatever threat comes over the horizon, rather than reckoning with the consequences of our actions in the next century.

It’s hard to escape that bleak measure of humanity as we watch the reality of climate change clash with the parochialism of both British and Scottish politics.

Mediterranean islands burn. Global heat records are smashed as meteorological maps get splattered red, like God imitating Jackson Pollock.

At home, though, political debate bends far from the green end of the spectrum. The notion of politicians rising to the challenge of forging environmental policies to mitigate the disaster the world faces is laughable. Politicians play in parliamentary sandpits while the planet literally burns.

Read more: We have entered a dangerous circle of political self-harm

As Brits fled Rhodes - heralding inevitable ruin for Mediterranean tourism - rather than looking upward and outward, political leaders turned inward, gazing not just at their navels, but the fluff in their navels.

The fact that Conservatives held on to the Uxbridge constituency by a whisker’s whisker was all it took for the party to urge Rishi Sunak to rein in green pledges. The wafer-thin win was attributed to local opposition to an ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez). Michael Gove - the expert-hater - now says net zero can’t become a “crusade”.

Why fight for our children's future, after all?

So now phasing out gas boilers and petrol cars is in the crosshairs of Tories facing electoral oblivion. Inevitably, Labour - a dog on a Tory chain - fell into line. Sadiq Khan, Labour’s London mayor, now apparently wavers over the city’s Ulez. Sir Keir Starmer seemingly blames Ulez for defeat at Uxbridge, despite Labour doing little to sell the policy to citizens.

Is more proof needed that politicians put party before country? Or planet?

Perhaps the greatest symbol of British political idiocy in the face of global calamity came in the Sunday Times. The front-page read: "Khan to rethink Ulez after call from Starmer." Next door was a photo of panicked tourists headlined "Thousands flee as Rhodes burns".

Clearly, some are mole-blind to the connection.

Yet we don’t need to fly to London - for aren’t planes cheaper than trains in the age of climate change? - to measure political failure. Scotland does little better.

Here, though, failure takes a different form. The Scottish Government has plenty of pretty decent ideas about how to address climate change. Yet it fails miserably to sell a single one to the electorate. Is a deposit return scheme needed? Yes, for pity’s sake, of course. Highly protected marine areas? Yes.

Yet, whether it’s down to the SNP being too fixated on independence, or arrogance from a Green Party which simply cannot imagine that some folk don’t think like them, the Edinburgh government has repeatedly failed to win the public around.

Read more: Filth and the fury: Is Scotland heading towards natural disaster?

This isn’t helped by an almost universally hostile press, which sees every Scottish Government policy through a prism labelled "negative, dangerous and stupid".

However, it must be said, the SNP, in particular, has endlessly attacked the press. So it reaps, perhaps, what it sows. If you consistently deride journalists, they aren’t going to give you an easy time. This isn’t to say two wrongs make a right, it’s simply a matter of fact.

The Scottish Government’s failure to communicate the need for change when it comes to policy and the environment was underlined with quite shocking clumsiness by Patrick Harvie, Green co-leader, at the weekend. Writing in The Herald, Harvie rightly made the case for more homes to be fitted with energy-efficient heat pumps. That means folk like you and I getting rid of gas boilers.

Harvie made mention of “the package of support provided by the Scottish Government” for households moving from boilers to heat pumps, and then continued with the political rhetoric.

What he didn’t do was spell out that there’s £7,500 grants available if you’re switching from gas boilers to heat pumps. That could reduce costs to £500.

Why could Harvie not see the need to communicate this? By not stating this clearly, he needlessly allowed misunderstanding to fester. Soon people were understandably angry at the false notion they’d have to pay, without support, to update home heating.

At the root of public hesitancy around environmental policies lies fear, namely the fear that we’ll have to pay hard for the changes needed. That fear can be misplaced: there’s people with Teslas who think they’ll be financially penalised through low emission zones.

So where fears are misplaced, politicians have an absolute duty to say so and prove their case - especially if they’re Green politicians who supposedly care about the environment.

I’ve got much time for the Greens. It’s the one party which sees what’s coming - or rather what’s now come - and has a raft of ideas to address the damage. Yet, Green politicians fail repeatedly to realise that they must convince others.

Read more: Tory attack on DRS is proxy war to destroy devolution

I’ll often speak to Green politicians and note their sense of disbelief that the entire world hasn’t fallen into line behind them. It would be nice if that was the case, but it isn’t - and so the Greens must grow up and do some hard convincing.

But criticising the Greens is too easy. They actually care. The real devils are those who shriek about "eco-zealots" every time suggestions are made to mitigate the environmental catastrophe unfolding before us. Will they still be hurling their culture war nonsense when swathes of Scotland are underwater?

However, we must also accept the fact that the policy changes needed to address climate collapse will still cost ordinary people, regardless of any grants available. That cannot stand. Change must happen, but it cannot be ordinary people who shoulder that burden. It wasn’t my household or yours which set the planet aflame. It was fossil fuel companies and state governments. They did the damage; they must foot the bill.

There’s a way to do that: extra taxation for energy giants.