Sandra Chapman: Listen to the complications of our climate change

I should have paid more attention but it’s hard to keep focused on climate matters especially when we haven’t had such a bad summer; at least it was reasonable here this year because I remember some terrible ones in the past.

I kept getting the impression it was all a lot of politicians, some good, some awful and some far too old and long out of their important jobs - Obama for example - to be worth listening to.

I’ve no recollection of the former President saying much about climate change when he was in the White House.

But then the present incumbent appears not to have much of a handle on climate change either.

In fact, do any of them, from Boris down, know what they’re talking about? Even worse, do they have any idea how we’re all going to manage the huge bills we all face when they do get some processes under way?

Take coal for example. Remember coal?

Of course you do. It’s the stuff that keeps us warm in winter, with roaring fires and the odd bit of laundry you absolutely need to have dried by the morning; otherwise you can’t go to work.

The end of coal is nigh, they say, with 190 countries and organisations ‘now committed to phase out its use’.

If you believe the ‘end of coal is nigh’ according to one politician, then I suppose you are a positive person and you’ll have the wit to build a below-ground bunker at the back of the house to make sure you have enough to keep you going for the next decade at least.

Dirty stuff it may be, but do we have to treat it like dirt, since it’s done its duty to us for generations?

I hear Russia and China weren’t among the signatories to a phasing out of the black stuff, or fossil fuel.

If you still feel respect for it maybe we should be wondering what’s up their sleeves, as the rest of us have sleepless nights wondering how we’re going to keep warm in winter if our coal-fuelled power stations are shut down.

One good thing to be saved is trees. Boris wants an end to deforestation by 2030.

But that’s less than a decade away.

Trees are already disappearing in their millions; think of all the forest fires around the world’s hotspots this year, including all those places we like to go in summer.

No, I don’t like the idea of climate change either, but Cop26 is leaving me cold.

And maybe one of these days I’ll find out what they said behind the scenes.