It seems as if every week there is a new report warning us of the perils of climate change and the irreparable damage our activities are doing to this planet. And despite the efforts of the international community — with one noteable exception — we are seemingly unable to reverse the trend of global warming. But if ever there was a need to redouble our efforts, work communally, collaborate and cooperate to limit our carbon emissions, the latest warning by the scientific community and researchers make for alarming reading.

We are losing the battle on climate change.

French President Emmanuel Macron has issued a warning cry that we are at the point of no-return. And unless we act together, act now, and act with determination and purpose, we are in danger of ensuring that our present stewardship of the planet will be the one that has damaged it beyond repair for our children and all other future generations.

In the high Canadian Arctic, a researcher recently videoed an emaciated and dying polar bear as it spent the last painful hours of its life searching rubbish bins for any food source, its traditional seals driven far away by a retreating sea ice shelf; permafrost is melting at ever-increasing rates; cricketers in India struggle to draw breath and bowl because of poor air quality.

Together, these are anecdotal tales that compound the empirical science that we are to blame for the warming of our planet as never before. We are the generation who have been responsible for the plastics that clog our seas, our disappearing marine life, the destruction of forest habitats, the erosion of our soils, the destruction of entire ecosystems on which so many species live in a delicate balance.

And we are the generation who must take action now — and ‘now’ is truly the operative word — to reverse this damage.

If there is a point in time that is the tipping point, we stand on it now, a perilous pinnacle that affords us a singular opportunity to make amends and meaningful change, or to fail to act. Failing to act means in 50 years’ time, there will be no tigers or elephants for small children to gaze at in wonder, for many to grow with lung conditions from poor air quality, or for the children of former islanders to wonder what it was like to live in places where the seas rose and covered their nation.

Failure is not an option.