I’m not.

And my concerns are based on the fact that it is up to politicians to decide the course and the outcome.

Even the best of them realise the practicality of getting through the next election. The worst of them have no vision beyond it.

Framing policies that will extend across the better part of this century seems to me the very definition of impossible.

Framing strategies for when the politicians’ grandsons and granddaughters are in the parliament, I can’t see happening.

Let me make my argument stronger.

The government is a very low polluter. Anything it actually does will be marginal at best, although its bureaucracies might be another matter.

Whatever it hopes to achieve, it must do with the synchronous co-operation of industry and commerce.

That’s the same industry and commerce that employs lobbyists with expense accounts that would fund a luxurious retirement for you and me, to ensure the government’s regulations are “in the industry’s best interests”.

That’s not always the same as the planet’s best interests – although it is, but many don’t seem to see it that way.

The Oil Crisis of the 21st century was thoroughly telegraphed in the 1970s.

Can anyone point out a single lesson we learned three decades ago?

I’ve Googled it and can’t find a clue.

The cars we drive are more fuel efficient, all 10-fold of them. So net loss there.

Industry in developed and developing nations cranks up a ferocious rate to make a buck, not to save the planet.

The self-congratulations that accompanies even the tiniest environmental concession lulls gullible captains of industry, workers and wider public into a false sense of security.

The best hope we have of getting some genuine action on global warming, climate change, the greenhouse effect and photosynthetic fog – or whatever the hell will be our ultimate poison – is for all of the important nations of the world to sign over some sovereignty to a global authority that is more durable than parliaments and despots, not confined by borders and with a clear and singular strategy that has harnessed the best minds on the globe to define the necessary solution, whatever its pain.

It’s been done – almost.

There was the League of Nations and latterly the United Nations when it was recognised that some matters need management beyond the jurisdiction of arbitrary borders.

The UN is limited in power and necessarily acquiescent to the nations that fund it, so it is not above politics.

A UN for the environment would need to be because ever will there be greenhouse guerrillas in one parliament or government house somewhere in the world.

And, while the US’s and China’s pollution belongs to the entire northern hemisphere and our CO2 makes its home in New Zealand, we will need an agreed authority to work beyond borders.

We need one with genuine power and purposeful objectives.

But, I’d reckon the chances of any leader signing over sovereignty to do this are about as good as the chance of saving the planet.