It all reminds me of an almost-forgotten holiday scene.

It is a warm, sunny day. My two young children (I am pregnant with the third) are playing on a beautiful beach in Dingle, Ireland.

Buckets and spades at the ready, the five-year-old has, with a little help from his wee sister, managed to dig a large, deep hole. They are now playing in it.

But they have no real understanding of inexorable nature of tides — and the tide is coming in.

Eventually, of course, the first tentative wave to reach them brings a trickle of water into the hole. Startled, they jump up. Action has to be taken. Buckets and spades are duly deployed and construction of flood defences starts immediately.

Within minutes they've built a sand wall around the hole. But the tide keeps coming in. Cautious waves lap at the new wall. Every now and then a particularly large and energetic wave pushes down a section of wall.

Completely engaged in their newly-discovered vocation, the children frenetically rebuild, defending the hole.

He — project manager — barks orders as he wields his spade. She, ever efficient even before she'd reached the age of three, puts her back into it, filling spaces exactly as instructed.

Breaches in the wall become more and more frequent. The children build the walls higher and quickly repair the breaches.

Finally, after a quarter of an hour of increasingly frantic building and repair work an enormous wave washes straight over the top of the wall, over both children and races up the beach, demolishing all in its path.

The children stand in what remains of the hole, dripping, uncomprehending, shaking their spades at the receding wave. Call me cruel and heartless, but I laughed until my sides hurt.

For most of my adult life I've known that last week's flooding was going to happen.

We've all known. We haven't known exactly where, and we haven't known exactly when, but we've known it would come — eventually. And now it has.

Many years ago a few scientists became concerned about the sheer volumes of carbon dioxide we were putting into the atmosphere. They argued that if this continued, the presence of these gases in the atmosphere would, effectively, turn the earth's atmosphere into a giant greenhouse, causing the earth to overheat.

They modelled the consequences. If we continued to pump carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, deserts would increase and crops would fail in the warmer parts of the world.

The little boy who directed operations on that beach in Dingle over 20 years ago is now living with exactly those consequences in Western Australia.

Where he lives, about 250 miles north of Perth, the rains failed completely last year. This year there has been a little rain. But it's been too little too late.

In more temperate climates such as ours, the prediction was that weather patterns would become increasingly unpredictable with years of drought and years of flood, so the devastation in England should not come as any great surprise to us.

Political focus over the past week has been exactly the same as that of a five-year-old who didn't understand the inexorability of the tides. All we need do is build walls, dig ditches, improve drainage and — hey presto — it'll all be all right.

But it won't be. This is only the beginning. Worldwide we're increasing greenhouse gas production year on year.

The rich world won't do anything because the poor world is increasing production. The aviation industry doesn't want to do anything because it only emits a bit of the total. The vehicle lobby doesn't want to do anything. Those with pretty views don't want wind farms near them.

Everyone thinks it's everyone else's responsibility.

It's long past time to get real. Governments around the world need to make it more difficult to drive cars and to fly. They need to put public money into renewables — regardless of public opposition.

The fact of the matter is it's everyone's responsibility.

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