Is Rother’s declaration of a climate emergency just hot air?

Going carbon neutral will have little effect (‘Rother declares a climate emergency’, September 20), and OTT language doesn’t help either.

There is a fundamental at work here: “The only period in the climate record as stable as our own IS our own. And it seems even more improbable that climatologists should make the discovery that we are living in this period of exceptional stability at the very moment when, by their own calculations, it is likely nearing and end” (Elizabeth Kolbert, ‘Ice Memory’, The New Yorker, January 7, 2002).

The history of planet Earth is the history of climate change. Given that humankind has only very recently appeared on the scene it may be that our stabilising influence is only temporary; but it should not be beyond our intelligence and knowledge to adapt to what may well be inevitable.

Will we be around a thousand years from now? Or have we just a walk-on part in a cosmos evolving into something utterly different, beyond our comprehension?