Who will we listen to on climate change if we ignore the burning question of the day?

Lineker has no right to talk about climate change because he used to swan around in a six-litre Merc, apparently. No contrite current day conversion to an electric Mini is going to make up for that scale of gas-guzzling history. He can’t comment on heatwaves since he has flown the world over on carbon-spewing planes as player and pundit.

Claiming to eschew private jets as he now does is just virtue-signalling. Besides, he’s a footballer, not an atmospheric physicist. You wouldn’t take advice from an atmospheric physicist on how to get past the Man City defence, would you?

So now that’s Gary put back in his box, who else is there to listen to on climate change?

Those atmospheric physicists? No way. Scientists have a vested interest in peddling panic because they’d never get their research funded otherwise. They’re also publicly paid, permanent and pensionable, so they can say and do anything they like and remain protected.

Definitely not the activists either. They’re all vegan cyclists who never wash and wear secondhand clothes and don’t have proper jobs so they have time to take the train instead of flying. They’re not like ordinary people. They have nothing to lose so they don’t understand what they’re asking others to give up.

The government? You’re having a laugh. They’re all about finding new ways to relieve hard-working people of their money through green taxes and inventing problems to deflect from the lousy job they’re doing running the country.

So who is deserving of the public ear on climate change? Might those most vulnerable to its impacts be in with a shout?

There are quite a few voices to choose from – at least 3.3 billion in fact.

The UN climate science body, the IPCC, said in February this year that 3.3-3.6 billion people were already highly vulnerable to climate change through dangerous and destructive impacts such as floods, droughts and heatwaves.

Half the world’s population suffers severe water shortages at some point during the year, almost one billion live in low-lying coastal areas with dangerous exposure to sea level rise and intensifying storms, and at least 500 million are in severely heat-stressed cities.

So we don’t need to hear from multimillionaire motormouths, or alarmist scientists, or hemp-wearing martyrs about climate change. We can listen to those who live it daily instead.

The problem is, we don’t. Not really.

When delegations from developing nations – the most vulnerable of the vulnerable – attend international climate talks, they get time and sympathy until the issues of loss and damage reparations or climate adaptation finance come up.

Then they get platitudes and a long finger pointing to the next round of talks at some date in the future.

When refugees escaping conflict or destitution fuelled or exacerbated by climate change turn up at the borders of wealthy countries, they are treated with suspicion, labelled economic migrants and put through a dehumanising asylum process.

Another fine example of how not to listen has been taking lethal shape in the Horn of Africa for the past two years.

Four failed rainy seasons have left large parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya in crisis, with crops destroyed, livestock decimated, hunger and malnutrition widespread, and famine creeping closer.

The area has suffered regular droughts in the past but their regularity and duration is increasing and the ability to repeatedly build back is diminishing.

Irish aid agency, Concern, is one of many organisations that have tried to draw attention to the plight of the people.

Its local staff are scientists but also ordinary residents, so their knowledge is invaluable and their stories compelling.

But they are not being heard because the problem is not really who is doing the talking about climate change but who is doing the listening – or not as it happens.

This weekend, Concern is bringing a small group of Irish journalists to the region to try to get the word out.

We’re flying, which is admission enough to unleash a torrent of abuse. And I agree to the extent that it should not be necessary to send outsiders to report on a situation that the insiders know intimately.

But if nobody listens to them, or to footballers, activists or politicians, then the choice is to say nothing, or shout louder.

I plan to add one more voice to the chorus.