A few days ago I was watching the evening news with my usual one eye when a familiar face popped up in the midst of a rally in the CBD. It was the very visage of my friend Martin Wolterding, who was in the process of being dragged by the police from his location in the middle of the road to another place, off camera. Martin and many others were involved in a climate change rally which was disrupting traffic in the Broadway area, sufficient to provoke the cops into needlessly aggressive action. It doesn't take much to get the police riled up and Martin ended up with a swollen arm and a nasty bruise to his side.

You might think that this is the lot of protesters - they will bounce back and be ready for a rally the following day! But Martin is a 75 year old academic who just happens to be passionate about climate change and there were many others of a similar age present too. This is an issue that crosses barriers of this kind and understandably so - survival is something deep within all creatures. Do we really want a planet that becomes increasingly uninhabitable over a relatively short space of time?

The sacrifices are not so great that they cannot be achieved. Still, I have my doubts. My reading of human history and psychology suggests that we will fall short, sufficient to bring disaster upon us. Happy to be proved wrong though!

Exhibit A