Europe, in the 1930s, was in a similar position. Fascism arose and the warning signs were impossible to miss. Europe failed to act and the world suffered appalling consequences.
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My struggle) in 1923 while in prison for attempting a coup d'etat in Bavaria. He outlined in detail his mad plans to take over most of the world and kill everyone he didn't like.
When he came to power in 1933 he did exactly that.
By 1945, 50 million people were dead and half of Europe suffered under barbarous communist regimes for another 50 years.
In 1934 when Hitler illegally re-occupied the Ruhr, he could have been stopped by a busload of London policemen. But everyone ignored the evidence right before their eyes and did nothing.
Like us, they preferred to watch the rugby and hope it would all go away. In our case, at the end of the day, there won't be a VE Day parade to celebrate the end of hostilities.
The likely end game is a massive multinational war and the last man standing will inherit a planet hardly worth inhabiting.
At 400 parts per million, atmospheric carbon has just exceeded the level at which two degrees of global warming is inevitable.
Without drastic remedial action, a four degrees rise will hit some time from 30 to 100 years from now.
The chances of immediate action are slim.
The world's most powerful leaders have no desire to save the planet any time soon.
Russia's Putin is bent on resurrecting imperial ambitions to cover up the shambolic state of his economy.
China's Chairman Xi realises that China's one party state is at risk, the environment is shattered, so he is building the world's biggest military to win the climate wars ahead.
President-elect Trump believes in coal. Like their European counterparts of the 1930s they disregard evidence that cries out for action.
The younger generation will pay an awful price for our collective failure, as did our forebears in the 1940s.
The last five years have been the hottest years on record. The Himalayan glaciers which supply water to 40 per cent of the world's population are receding rapidly.
Pakistan and India are on the verge of a battle over water flowing in rivers that cross their common border. The list is endless and the outlook is bleak.
We are up there with the most complacent. With easily harnessed hydro, wind, and solar power we assume that she'll be right.
We are a small nation priding ourselves on boxing above our weight. In this case we are not even in the ring.
We have done nothing meaningful to reverse climate change. Our efforts to address our carbon reduction goals are a joke.
We plan to meet our contractual obligations by using internationally discredited carbon credits issued by Ukrainian and Russian fraudsters years ago.
This monopoly money approach destroyed the carbon market for years and was only recently corrected. But we are still planning to use those bogus credits as part of our climate change solution.
Domestically, we are no better. With our limitless potential for renewable energy New Zealand could move effortlessly to electric cars and an electrified rail network.
Instead KiwiRail is replacing its electric locomotives with diesels. A small step for a state-owned company but a great leap towards assisted international suicide.
There are no central or local government incentives to move to electric cars.
The five Hawke's Bay councils have just three fully electric cars.
Napier has two. Hastings has one. The rest zero. Wairoa is rumoured to be looking at a horse and buggy, both armoured.
The regional council is particularly backward given its mandate to protect the environment.
So it is up to the individual to act local, think global. We have to change very fast, very soon.
It would be comforting to look forward to 2017 and beyond and think this is the year we turn the corner and salvation is at hand.
But it isn't so. That's what they thought every year from 1933 until reality stepped in on September 3, 1939.
With the best will in the world unless we make big changes, every time we turn the key, we are helping to kill our grandchildren. And inviting another, this time, irreversible global holocaust.
Tim Gilbertson is a farmer, former mayor of Central Hawke's Bay and former Hawke's Bay regional councillor. His column will appear every fortnight on a Saturday. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
