Depending on their perspective, Londoners in the past week have either been entertained, inconvenienced or irritated by the Extinction Rebellion demonstrators, but it has been hard to find anyone who actually disagrees with the basic thesis that the earth is in peril by human habitation.

The real question is what we can do about it, how much of this is up to Governments and to individuals and how much at local level. It is this which reminds us of the comment by the late US House of Representatives Speaker Tip O’Neill that ‘all politics is local’ and one might even add that ‘climate change is local’ as well.