Conquering Covid is our immediate concern. But reversing the devastation climate change causes is just as important.
The virus has taken 139,000 British lives and will claim many more before it is done with us. But that will be as nothing compared to the lives which will be lost to global warming if temperatures are not kept to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
It is not just the future of our children, or our children’s children, at stake here, but the continuation of our planet.
With the COP26 summit opening in Glasgow next week, Boris Johnson has been talking a good game. But as so often with this PM, that has not stopped his bad behaviour.
Get all the latest news sent to your inbox. Sign up for the free Mirror newsletter
Today we reveal how he dumped 21 tons of CO2 by taking election campaign flights in a private jet provided by a Tory donor.
To picture what that amount of greenhouse gas looks like, think 9,500 fire extinguishers. Had Mr Johnson let the train take the strain, his carbon footprint would have been just 0.1 of a ton.
The PM says climate change must be met with action, not hot air – while generating so much of it by his actions.
We know he is no master of detail, but even he must see that £5,000 subsidies to replace gas boilers with heat pumps will not wash with families facing bills of £18,000 to install them.
Everything in the garden is not as rosy as Mr Johnson paints it. Especially if you do not have a garden for the 30-metre trenches that ground source heat pumps need.
Nor did Mr Johnson mention that you may have to rip out your radiators. And get a separate water heater. Or buy pullovers because some heat pumps are not so hot in cold weather.
A responsible PM would outline the drawbacks and explain how he intends to overcome them. Because overcome them we must.
If we fail, British summers will become hotter, winters wetter and floods frequent. Crops will shrivel. There will be no more white Christmases – in fact, no snow at all except in northern Scotland.
If the polar ice caps melt Edinburgh, Dundee and Inverness disappear, Norfolk becomes a lake and only boats will navigate the streets of London, Cardiff and the North East.
COP26 is not just vital for Britain, but for the world. Yet the leaders of Russia, China, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, South Africa and Japan are not going.
Even the Pope is snubbing it, so God help us all.
With Covid, no one is safe until everyone is safe. With climate change, no one is safe until everyone signs up.
It is why expectations for COP26 are being downplayed. The most we can hope for is that Mr Johnson and President Joe Biden do their best with the rest. And as host, the PM should be setting an example.
Before the good which might come of this is lost in the slipstream of his own hypocrisy.
