The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in Berlin at the end of February, has understandably been overshadowed by the events in Ukraine. Yet climate change and the current war have some things in common. Both threaten international security. Both are existential threats to life on earth. And both are terrifying examples of the harm that can arise when there is a lack of preventative action.

The IPCC’s report makes clear that everyone needs to participate if we want to avert climate disaster and its attendant consequences: governments, the private sector, members of civil society. In the UK, there is a tendency to assume that responsibility lies with government; and that action by individuals is limited to telling politicians what we think. Which raises two problems: lack of resources, both human and financial, if we leave it all to government; and a lack of credibility – in the eyes of the politicians we are trying to influence – if we express outrage without seriously tackling the carbon emissions from our corporate activity or personal lifestyle.

Acting with a sense of powerlessness, or rather failing to act, allows dictators to gain control and the environment to be destroyed – on the principle that “nature abhors a vacuum” (Aristotle?). There is a world of difference between having no influence on the one hand, and having a very small, but positive, degree of influence on the other. Multiplied by millions, the former is still zero, but the latter could make the difference between living in a dictatorship or not, or having a sustainable future or not.

And while protest is not a substitute for individual action, it needs to be part of our response. Unless we constantly tell our leaders what we think, then they will abuse power in our name. A topical example is the policing bill that has just been pushed through the UK parliament and is now awaiting Royal Assent – which gives the police powers to stop protests if they’re getting noisy, and which is particularly aimed at climate “extremists”. It might not be in quite the same league as Russia’s new law to incarcerate any citizen who criticises its military, but there’s a worrying similarity in kind. I recommend, at the very least, an email to one’s MP, because even if it’s too late to stop the bill’s passage, the strength of feeling expressed might affect how this worrying piece of legislation is subsequently interpreted or amended.