I admit it, I hate recycling. I’ve just heaved three large plastic boxes of newspapers, packaging and wine bottles (not too many, honest) out to the mighty “green” rubbish truck . Four-letter words were used. I bet most of my carefully filed trash ends up in landfill anyway ... grrrrrrr.

I know, I know. I am bad. But I am also not alone. A new report details how many of us have switched off from climate change doom-mongering. The Institute for Public Policy Research think tank, in an exhaustive tome called Consumer Power, states baldly: “Many participants expressed a weariness and fatigue about the subject of climate change ... some found the issue very boring and became noticeably less animated when the topic was introduced . . . others dismissed it as ‘faddy’ and ‘trendy’ ... while many also saw people who engage in environmentally friendly behaviours as ‘self-righteous and smug’.”

We know we should care; the propaganda is everywhere, from the news to films such as Al Gore’s lecture, An Inconvenient Truth, or more recently The Age of Stupid, in which Pete Postlethwaite sits in a devastated 2050, wondering why we fools didn’t do something to save the planet while we had the chance. But how many of us watch them — have you? And if you do — I saw The Age of Stupid last week — you just end up depressed. It’s all so huge and the contributions that any of us can make individually seem so pathetic.

But none of this is going away. At the United Nations in New York last week, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that without countermeasures, global temperatures would rise by up to 6.4C by 2100; heatwaves, the disappearance of the Greenland icesheet (leading to a 23ft rise in sea levels), frequent cyclones and heavy rains would then be inevitable. And while some of us flood and drown, semi-arid regions will fry. We were looking at widespread hunger, war and refugees, he warned, calling for steps to be taken to ensure that global emissions peaked no later than 2015.

That is only five years away. Many of us already have vague plans for what we might be doing then, where our children might go to school, where we might be living . . .

Why, if the time frame is so tight, the reductions so crucial and climate change the big issue for our lifetime, are so many of us so bored by the problem? Why are we not mobilising in mighty numbers to fight the good fight like our grandparents eventually did against the Nazis? After all, if we’ve only got a few more years before the “tipping point” — the point of no return, when methane starts to erupt out of the melting icecaps and global temperatures will escalate out of control, unstoppable — we need to get on with it.

The trendification of the cause, the earnest celebrities exhorting us to care, the trivial suggestions about behaviour don’t chime with the magnitude of the challenge. The problems seem so mighty and amorphous but the strategies available on a personal level to fight it so inadequate. Walking round the supermarket I feel guilty about buying blueberries from Peru ... those melting glaciers ... but I still buy them. Not doing so seems a senseless response to the problem. Similarly, exhortations to switch off TVs at the wall, or turn off a mobile phone charger to save energy. Professor David MacKay, author of Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, and the government’s latest adviser, says that all the energy saved in switching off your charger for one day is used up in one second of car driving.

Many of us want to do our bit but feel we are being ripped off by energy companies who charge us even more of a fortune for a “greener” tariff; we are wary of our enthusiasm for changing the world being exploited by greedy chancellors seeking “green taxes” on our petrol.

We’re not stupid, we know that a Big Green Bag from Tesco isn’t going to stop the planet frying. When companies try to persuade us that we can be cool and green by buying more stuff, we know it’s hokum. As MacKay puts it: “If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little.”

Ultimately, the only way to fix our frazzling planet is to stop burning massive amounts of fossil fuels to make energy and switch to renewables and nuclear power. In other words, for governments to change the way energy is produced. They also need to devise a pricing system that puts a value on carbon so that using less of it saves money. That isn’t so impossible; the world pretty well managed to close the hole in the ozone layer by banning CFCs in the Montreal protocol.

If there is enough of a collective will, our politicians could negotiate a way through this. A UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December will try to do just that. It won’t be easy but last week China (the world’s most polluting nation) offered to slow its increase in emissions, and India has said it will set targets for cutting greenhouse gases. Others, America primarily, need to do so too.

That is where all of us can play a part. Before the UN summit last week, I went, rather tentatively, on my first climate change demonstration. It was all rather surreal. I got a viral e-mail from a green friend, which said to gather in Parliament Square at 12.18pm. I got there early and hung around feeling a bit of a prat in my cycling helmet, watching the tourists milling about.

Then, as Big Ben’s hands reached 12.18, about 150 people swept on to the grass, waving their mobile phones. The telephone numbers of Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, the climate change minister, were handed out and we were told to call and say we wanted a deal at Copenhagen. It was, of course, constantly engaged. But then one girl (a pretty blonde with a Mulberry handbag) got through to Gordon. (A coincidence? You decide.) “Will you be going to Copenhagen?” she asked. “I’m here demonstrating because we really want a deal.” She began to smile. “He’s going,” she said, thrilled. “That’s the first time he’s said he’ll go.” The little crowd cheered. They looked sweet; studenty-young professionals, a dad with a baby in a tie-dye sling and lots of besuited could-have-been civil servants carrying literary publications. I felt a bit silly, but also surprisingly proud.

Yes, we were a middle-class bunch. And yes, it was a bit twee. But many of the great movements for change, from the abolition of slavery to the suffragettes, have started by piquing the consciences of the bourgeoisie. And the best thing? I felt I was doing something. It felt better than being infuriated by the recycling.

eleanormills@sunday-times.co.uk

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