Yet ask a seasoned journalist and they will tell you, yes more people care, but it doesn’t mean they care enough to read about it. As our world trundles on, it also isn't contributing to that urgent action we need now.

With very little surprise the subject of climate change has been mired in politics. An endless progression of bad news has led to audiences switching off. We must be more solutions focused has been the chorus of those engaged in this issue. People need to know they can make a difference. Research institutes, NGOs and governments pour resources into seeking to ignite the interest of communities towards action, in some cases it works, but in others it doesn’t.

Why? Why does the future of our planet fail to inspire a wall of action or create a devoted audience eager to tune into the latest solutions. Why are media outlets falling over themselves in ever new ways to ensure the channel is not changed?

We talk in terms that don’t occupy the daily mind. Sustainability, climate action and climate justice, all noble goals but also signals. Signals of status and knowledge. 

I recently spent some time working with a development committee in rural area. Such terms common in the climate change debate are alien to them, they even threaten them. They signal change, they signal an urban and educated mindset that really doesn’t understand their cycle and way of life.

I fear for how debate on climate change is travelling in Ireland. Climate change is a useful vehicle to carry political ambitions and in rural parts of our country, there is seething resentment to a debate carried on the national airwaves.

I sometimes wonder is that the problem, is the location of the debate from air-conditioned national studios helping or hindering. What discussion occurs right down at local radio where a generational loyalty still lives, what discussion occurs on those podcasts many sneer at, but command a deep allegiance.

I am always struck by respect in rural areas in Ireland. The respect of a GAA star born with clear talent and little ego. The respect towards a family who has always had it hard. The respect towards a hard-working farmer who walks into his local pub, and whose quietness has always spoken loudly.

I wonder have we as a society ever truly engaged that respect. Not glossy billboards or digital ‘campaigns’ with smart messages, but a conversation broken down to honest reality. In that deadening jargon they call it peer to peer communication, but even by the act of labelling it, a weight and tone is immediately assigned.

What will history write of us when we are long gone. Right now for me the pen is writing that we acknowledged that worrying issue, but continued on our way. We were blessed with something so beautiful but we had bills to pay. We wrote books and plays, held concerts and and held forth on stage, but our art crumbled and cynicism has taken the day.

My late father could talk to anyone, summers I spent on his shop floor wondering when I could go home, but his conversations continued. Why, because he listened. He listened to the detail when someone described a hard time they had, he really saw the joy when it flowed from story. 

Our ability to listen has been generationally chipped away, fast and immediate are the altar of our daily way. We speak at and not to each other.

If we are to overcome this challenge we have to re-instate listening into our public discourse. We must nurture a culture and use education as Yeats stated, not "for the filling of a pail, but to light a fire”. 

The world we know is rapidly changing, it is past time that we truly tuned in.

• Eoin Hahessy is the director of media and communications at UCC. He is writing this in a personal capacity