Hurricane Floyd may have been an anti-climax as a spectacle of disaster, but it should serve as a sharp reminder that climate change and environmental degradation are now abiding features of our world.
While some two million people were trying to escape Floyd in the US this week, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme, Dr Klaus Topfer, was telling a press conference in London that the Kyoto Protocol - in which leading industrialised countries agreed to cut the emission of greenhouse gases - is failing. It could already be too late to stop global warming, he said.
Hurricane Floyd is a typical example of the destruction climate change is causing. Three million people have died in natural disasters over the last five years: according to one calculation there has been an eight-fold increase in their severity since the 1960s.
These are sobering and salutary warnings. And they come not from some stereotypical ecological Jeremiah but from a man who was for seven years environment minister in the last Christian Democrat government in Germany. The report he launched, Global Environment Outlook 2000, was drawn up in consultation with thousands of scientists and takes account of their latest research. Dr Topfer says change will require "a massive increase in political will. We have the technology but we are not applying it . . . The integration of environmental thinking into the mainstream of decisionmaking . . . is now the best chance for effective action".
The US alone emits up to a quarter of carbon dioxide, the most climate-warming gas, much of it from cars. On average US citizens consume 1,600 litres of fuel per annum compared to 320 in Europe. But there is no sign of the necessary political will. The US is still arguing about what to do with its Kyoto commitments, indeed whether to adhere to them at all.
Dr Topfer says recycling and alternative energy sources come well within current technological capacity. He draws hope from the successful efforts in Europe to defeat acid rain by a 75 per cent reduction in sulphur dioxide and the worldwide reduction in the production and use of CFCs which caused the hole in the ozone layer. Water quality has also been very much improved in Europe.
But in less developed parts of the world water shortages loom as a prime cause of future conflicts. Over-use of nitrogen in fertilisers has emerged as a new threat, leading to excessive plant growth and grave degradation of waterways and seas. Many other threats to the global environment are dealt with in this report. As Dr Topfer sees it, they will necessitate "inspired political leadership and intense co-operation across all regions and sectors", including ways to make multinational companies much more publicly accountable for their actions and what they produce.
It is becoming impossible to disagree with these conclusions.