Step 1 - We accept the fact that we have failed.

A little while ago it dawned on me that my attitude to climate change is not unlike that of a person who's been persuaded to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. We must cure ourselves of addiction to fossil fuels, but I'm still completely hooked on the stuff.

So I decided to work through a version of the 12-step programme. The first step is:

"We accept the fact that all our efforts to stop burning fossil fuels have failed."

This is obviously true both globally, and also personally. Globally all our efforts at international agreements have failed, and even nominal targets such as "no more than 2 degrees C" are clearly forecast to be exceeded.

I read recently that solar electricity is now cheaper than conventional generation in 19 markets around the world. In China and USA, the proportion of renewable energy installation is slowly increasing, but that means we're still emitting more and more CO2 every year. On present showing we're not going to reach "carbon neutral" which some scientists say we must achieve by 2036.

At the personal level, the solar hot water panels we installed 20 years ago, and the PV panels more recently have certainly reduced our energy demand, but they don't keep us warm in the depths of winter when our gas consumption is pretty much like everyone else. (OK, we turned the thermostat down). Have my wife and I stopped driving? Flying to my sister-in-law? Buying food from all over the world at the supermarket? Er, no. The fact is that our efforts to reduce our personal carbon footprint have shrunk it by perhaps 10% so far.

The thing is, I understand that climate change is threatening the lives of my children and grandchildren, but it's not "in yer face" a clear and present danger. Floods and storms didn't happen much around here, nor did the heatwaves and droughts further afield. I can only imagine how awful they were, but I can't imagine them for very long.

Meanwhile almost everyone around me seems to get along just fine without worrying over it. In fact many seem to get along much better than me because I bear personal scars from speaking out. Mankind has always turned its back on people who say how awful the future will be if we don't mend our ways.

Thus peer pressure doth make silent climate deniers of us all.

We have no choice but to accept the fact that all our efforts have failed.