IT might all yet change, but 2009 is unlikely go down as a vintage summer. Despite the promised sizzler, much of the country has been shivering in its raincoat.

But having just spent a month in the south of France, where the temperatures have been consistently in the upper 30s, there’s another side to all this sunshine which holds a message for us all.

As the secheresse parched its way across the departments, prompting the annual spate of Mediterranean forest fires, ignited by accident or design, it was difficult not to fear the inevitability of a tipping point when recovery and sustainability are no longer a guaranteed naturally occurring consequence.

Transported 300 miles north by the speed-numbing TGV from the Bordelais vignes gorging on their endless sunny rays to the French capital, I was confronted by a further hint that nature is relentlessly turning up the back-burner: the leaves on the plane trees, normally a sweeper’s nightmare in mid-September, had begun shedding a dishevelled carpet in early August.

Against this, the more universal aspect of impending climate change assaulted other senses – the urban pollution of a modern city struggling to shrug off the effects of mechanised living generating extra heat and exhaust.

Of course it’s nothing like Seoul or Delhi, and if you’re going to choke, Paris is by far the chic-est location to do it in. Fortunately, the proliferation of tree-lined boulevards and squares alleviates the excesses of air-conditioning and scooter exhaust, but you can taste it, and you know that if you can do that, there’s more going on besides. The worrying thought for us is that this ‘foreign’ capital is on the same latitude as us, a mere 45-minute Flybe hop away!

‘We are all going to have to pay for the climate,’ warned former French PM Michel Rocard as the current government slapped on a range of carbon taxes payable from next year.

Wow, how the bureaucrats’ eyes light up. A new stealth tax! Easy to levy, but what related remedy does it get spent on? It’s so easy to impose – anything from the size of your house to the fuel you use, to your own lifestyle.

It’s not new, because the UK already levies an environmental surcharge on all your flights. Tell me that doesn’t disappear straight into the black holes of Whitehall!
I confess to being a fully signed-up member of the David Attenborough branch of the Darwin Fan Club. With time, species can and will adapt to changing climatic conditions, with all that that means for their food sources, habitat etc. The problem is, this time we’re not giving them the time to do it.

Good old Homo Sapiens is hell-bent on squandering the planet’s resources within a single generation. Where other species adapt to natural circumstances, he expects the rest to adapt to him, and if not, it’s simple: he sets about altering the natural chain of events with disastrous consequences – excessive oil and mineral extraction, deforestation and carbon emission.

So we are faced with the horrendous prospect that if we – that is every consuming, polluting individual and nation – continue emitting poison into the atmosphere at current or increasing rates, by the end of this century the sea level will have risen by at least a metre, with frequent severe storms and droughts. Ergo the lower levels of our cosy little Island will be as habitable as a Bangladesh flood plain, if they haven’t disappeared completely.

And if you think that’s too far away to contemplate, it doesn’t actually mean we have until the end of the century before it happens. The dilemma is when to start to protect or abandon. We’ve seen how effectively barrages have been used in the North Sea by the Dutch – who by their own admission are facing a whole new generation of defence building if they are to cope with protecting their low-lying territory.

On the other hand, there’s conserving and storing the earth’s greatest natural resource: fresh water. Without it, nothing grows, and as winter ice ceases to form on mountain tops, so does its controlled release downstream.

That’s a continental problem. In an Island like ours where there aren’t mountains but where there is a hungry increase in consumption, we really need to be thinking of conserving our rainfall in the natural reservoirs offered by the deep valleys such as those leading down to Rozel and Grève de Lecq before the NIMBYs start planting ‘renowned’ architect-approved boxes in them.

The UK government has just launched yet another consultation exercise in place of real action to make food production more efficient in the face of climate change, rising commodity prices and water shortages and galloping population increase, mainly in areas least able to sustain it.

So be prepared for toothless exhortations over green behaviour on one hand, while on the other the earth’s natural cycle is further disrupted by experiments with genetically modified crops and exhausted by the abandonment of ‘set-aside’ and crop rotation, while yet more high-profile conferences in plush locations discuss watered-down treaties agreed in advance.

If only politics weren’t so blind. Until recently the world’s greatest polluter could see weapons of mass destruction at the bottom of every Iraqi garden but suffered serial myopia whenever it came to spotting the devastating effect of domestic CO2 exhalation from its own back yard.

But let’s not roll over backwards in fear and awe. There’s plenty of time to enjoy the prospect of Mediterranean summers and vineyards in Scotland, but there is a serious warning for us all to heed, and putting off the inevitable is not an option.