WE human beings are perplexing. We can be remarkably clever, particularly with technology, but it’s outweighed by strong self interest, greed, and concern only for the moment. Holidays are more important than the future as the crowds at Heathrow demonstrate following flight cancellations.

We seem determined to ignore the certain threat from increasing atmospheric CO2, yet we spend billions on the military just in case there’s a war.

Similarly the recent election ignored CO2 and the dangerous world that we will leave for our children. We certainly don’t merit the tag homo sapiens – wise man, as homo avarus – greedy man - is more fitting. My great grand children will live into the next century, and I am concerned that they’ll have to endure a collapsing and unstable world.

There will be at least ten billion people with millions seeking new homes because of the spread of deserts, hotter temperatures, storms, flooding and rising sea levels. Frontier disputes and fighting will be the norm.

The Greens apart the manifestos of the three traditional parties barely mentioned what we must do to keep the temperature rise below two degrees as each concentrated on promising voters more of what they have too much of already.

The new Conservatives environment minister is a climate change sceptic who wants all such matters removed from the school curriculum, renewable energy taxed and no more land based wind turbines. His party support gas fracking, new motorways, high speed rail and additional runways, as well as relying on the climate change denying DUP.

Labour and the Lib Dems were only partially better, though they both oppose fracking, and promise support for renewable energy in all its forms. However their commitment to new runways and high speed rail suggests that they don’t really understand how we should behave as thoughtful custodians of the future.