ARE you an optimist or a pessimist?

Does thinking about climate change make you feel hopeful, because scientists will deliver the answers, like unlimited amounts of hydrogen or storing carbon dioxide under the sea?

Or hopeless, because it’s too late, as we’ve already set off a chain reaction of natural destruction that can’t be reversed?

This week, more than 200 medical journals (including the British Medical Journal (www.bmj.com) across all five continents have published the same leading article, warning the United Nations (and the rest of us) of the health problems connected with global warming, such as the effects on pregnancy, child health, dehydration, breathing problems, poor nutrition through crop failure, and many more.

They call on all Governments, as well as financial institutions (our banks and pension funds to you and me) and businesses to take stronger measures urgently. Clearly, individual actions such as recycling are not enough.

But would we accept such measures?

So here’s the good news. In the past few weeks people have been out on the streets, in Taunton as well as London, talking with the public about climate change.

What used to be a niche interest is now mainstream.

A fresh report by the lifestyle website RestLess (www.restless.co.uk) found that 78% of over-50s believe the UK government should be doing more to address the climate crisis, even if it’s going to cost us money.

My own impression, from talking to people in the street, is that younger people want government action even more strongly.

If the RestLess report is correct, we need to convince our political leaders that we are serious about the need for urgent change.

Because if we don’t, then it soon won’t matter whether we are optimists or pessimists.

The philosopher Quassim Cassam said recently that denial isn’t to do with what we believe, but what we do. And there’s still a lot we need to do.

SIGURD REIMERS