There used to be a series of advertisements in the New Yorker magazine that showed a panic-stricken man on the streets of Philadelphia desperately trying to draw people's attention to some impending disaster. One week it was a King Kong-style monster on top of a skyscraper, the next an escaped lion from the zoo. But no one paid any attention; they all had their heads buried in a newspaper. “In Philadelphia,” read the ad, “nearly everyone reads The Inquirer.”

Sir David King must feel a bit like that. So too must the 200 or so top scientists, who issued their apocalyptic warning about climate change in December. “Time is running out!” they yell. “Ten to 15 years left to save the world!” “Disaster threatens!” “Ecosystems on the brink of extinction!”

The predictions of Sir David, formerly the Government's Chief Scientist, are even scarier. He says there could be a 3C rise in the world's temperature, leading to a global drop in cereal crops, putting 400 million more people at risk of hunger, and up to three billion at risk of flooding, without access to fresh water supplies. The outcome would be the destruction of half the world's nature reserves and a fifth of its coastal wetlands. Goodbye Norfolk, so long the Western Isles, pity about the Thames Estuary.

Now you could forgive the ordinary man in the street for shrugging his shoulders, burying his nose in a copy of The Sun, and taking advantage of that estimable paper's offer of a free energy-saving light bulb. “Not much else I can do about it, mate,” is an understandable reaction. What is more worrying is that this seems to be roughly the attitude adopted by the Ministry of Defence, local authority planning departments, the Scottish National Party and a raft of supposedly responsible organisations, elected or paid to protect their fellow citizens.

Take the Government. As The Times has been reporting this week, a block has been imposed on a number of wind farm developments, because the MoD is worried that they may interfere with its radar systems. Apparently, wind turbines create a sort of black hole above them, which means that radar screens may not be able to pick up a squadron of low-flying bombers as they zoom in to zap us. Pleading “national security”, the MoD has lodged objections to half a dozen onshore sites for reasons which, if applied to the larger sites planned around Britain's coastline, would place the the Government's entire renewable energy programme in jeopardy.

What sort of crazy logic is that? Which is the most dangerous threat to this country - the launch of a Cold War-style attack on Britain by the Russians, with the MiGs gaining a few seconds advantage from turbine clutter on our radar screens, or the imminent disappearance of the polar icecap and the engulfing of the East Coast by the North Sea? The world's scientists say it is the latter. The MoD's boffins say it is the former. And on their say-so we await, in suspended animation, as the icebergs melt.

If that seems a blinkered view of the world, what do we say about the irredeemable frivolity of local councils across the country that have been refusing planning applications for wind farms left, right and centre because they threaten some local beauty spot, or interfere with ramblers, or require an access road through somebody's backyard? For heaven's sake, in 20 years time, as we slide below the surface of the water, there may be no backyard at all, let alone a view to spoil. What kind of protection is that?

Worst offenders are organisations such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, English Nature, Scottish Natural Heritage or the many environmental lobby groups that routinely object to applications which, they claim, pose a threat to a passing eagle or the lesser-spotted whimbrel. Whatever happened to the eagle eye? Are hawks really too dim these days to spot a 400ft turbine?

As for the SNP, for sheer humbug and hypocrisy it deserves to be strapped to a melting iceberg and towed out to sea. Having promised to make Scotland “the wind capital of Europe”, its members are now objecting to wind farms around the country, and particularly in the Hebrides, which is one of the few places where turbines are genuinely energy-efficient. The reason? There are votes to be picked up, a seat or two to be won, a slim hold on power to be maintained. I hope that, when the water bubbles up around Alex Salmond's constituency, I still have the means to don my snorkel and ask him how he feels now about his failure to understand the concept of responsible government.

I do not claim that wind farms on their own are the answer to global warming. But they are certainly part of it. However inefficient and unreliable, they are currently the only show in town, the only known supplier of renewable energy on any scale that is available here and now, rather than in 15 or 20 years' time. Nuclear energy? Of course, but on its own it can never fulfil the world's needs. Read David Fleming's pamphlet The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy and worry about what happens when the world's endowment of uranium ore begins to run low some time after 2010, leading to an ever greater reliance on fossil fuels. Tidal or wave energy? Certainly, but not much of it will be feeding into the national grid in less than 15 or 20 years. Biofuels? Coal conversion? Undersea recycling of CO2? Saving energy in the home? All, surely, have a part to play if we take the threat in any way seriously.

Instead, it seems, we are to continue accepting natural gas from Russia and East Asia, whatever the wisdom of relying on some highly unstable sources of future power, and whatever the impact of carbon emissions. The road to destruction? Well, maybe. For the time being, let's carry on, eyes firmly glued to the small print.

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