"WE'RE all doomed, Captain Mainwaring. Doomed, I tell ye. Doomed."

You must say this with wild, staring eyes in a Private Frazer voice for this to sound effective. If you're too young to have seen Dad's Army, ask a parent. (Better still, get the DVD; as a comedy of Little England it's a hundred times funnier than Little Britain.)

I've been feeling a bit Frazerish myself this week, owing to environmental guru James Lovelock's prediction that climate change will destroy most of humanity, and sooner than we think. It's not the kind of news one feels able to deal with on a Monday morning, particularly when you return home from the school run to the silent recrimination of cereal bowls and the stale odour of burnt toast.

Still, the TV news bulletins were fixated on what Sven said to the Fake Sheikh, and no one else was reporting that the end of the world was nigh. It seemed a bit of an oversight. Excluding Nostradamus, suicidal cults, near-misses by the odd comet and that man with the sandwich board who used to patrol outside Oxford Circus Tube, it's not often we get told it's all over bar the shouting.

Lovelock doesn't give a precise answer to "How long have we got, doc?", but the prognosis isn't good. According to him, before the end of the century, "Gaia" (his term for the Earth as a self-regulatory control system) will have had her revenge for our environmental messing. All that is likely to be left of the human race is a few breeding pairs in the Arctic, presumably living on makeshift catamarans like Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

I discussed his theory with my partner, who countered it by saying that no one can know anything with certainty about the future. A robust exchange of views ensued, with him refusing to believe it was all over for Homo sapiens. "Frankly, I'm more shocked that Eminem's marrying Kimberly again after he threatened to murder her," he said, flipping through the paper.

The husband, unlike me, is a glass-half-full sort of person. Talk of an apocalypse encourages his Blade Runner fantasies, which have nothing to do with environmental meltdown and a lot to do with Daryl Hannah. It's no good discussing bird flu with him, which is more imminent than the polar bears being wiped out, let alone us lot. If I even suggest we stock up on baked beans and powdered milk I get a talking-to.

Rightly so, you may say. There's no point in worrying about something we've got no control over, whether it's a flu pandemic or global warming. Besides, scientists can't even agree to what extent global warming is occurring - or, indeed, if it is.

Well, excuse me, but that's tosh. As I write, a report on the BBC's Ten O'Clock News reveals that Antarctica is warming more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth and that evidence from deep in the ice proves that greenhouse gasses are to blame. Even I, with a barely scraped A level in geography, can tell this is serious.

Still, environmentalists aren't much better at agreeing. Lovelock, who believes that atmospheric pollution is disguising the true extent of the problem, is so against the further burning of fossil fuels that he's become an unlikely proponent for nuclear energy, enraging the rest of the green movement.

Putting the fear of God into people doesn't help the environment. It only elicits despair and a "why bother?" reaction. There are other campaigners who believe there is hope, if we move swiftly enough to reduce our emissions. But to reduce them to virtually zero, within the next 50 years? Can we live with the changes we'd need to make? Can we live without them?

WHAT does this mean for our own minute corner of the planet, here in York? The city council wants to reduce the amount of waste we produce and has sent out a consultation leaflet for our views (though not everyone appears to have received it).

I was confused, to say the least, about the two options presented for dealing with residual waste - incineration and mechanical biological treatment - and didn't feel the information provided was sufficient to give an informed answer.

Not that it matters: it seems minds have already been made up. A proposal for one of each is to go to the council's executive shortly, with a view to applying for a Government grant to build a spiffy new incinerator.

In the questionnaire, the partnership's "vision" is described as delivering "a high quality, sustainable, customer-focused and cost-effective waste management service". Laudable as this is, and I don't like to sound picky, but shouldn't visions be - well, visionary? Where is the environment in this?

I certainly didn't know that 11 options for dealing with York's waste had been identified in an earlier consultation paper, as claimed by Green Party councillor Andy D'Agorne. In view of James Lovelock's theory, I'd like to know what those alternatives are before we go lighting a bonfire under our future.

Updated: 16:30 Friday, January 20, 2006