It’s been eight years since Al Gore’s revelation. We spent the first four years in denial and the rest frozen in the headlights. Our generation will be remembered for not having been inconvenienced.

The science is settled. As the atmosphere degrades, the temperature goes up. As the temperature goes up, the ice caps melt and sea level rises. It’s global, manmade and irreversible, even if all those gas-guzzling SUVs on the freeway wanted to reverse it.

Greenhouse emissions, global temperatures, ice-cap melting and sea-level rise are getting notably worse. At Mauna Loa, the ratio of CO2 in the air exceeded 400 parts per billion, the highest in millions of years.

Climate change will mean more to Hawaii than most other places. Seventy percent of Hawaii’s beaches are already eroding. Surrounded by ocean, we live and work mostly at sea level, exposed to inundation. It will dry up tourism and real estate and affect our water supply. Will your kids stay here then?

But we’re numb. Act 286 was enacted last year, calling for climate change adaptation guidelines that would apply to every project in the state, but nobody can tell us that it has yet been applied to any given project, including those in low-lying Kakaako. Are the agencies even aware that such guidelines exist?

Do we have the political will to put this issue at the top of the list and spend the billions to deal with it? Or will we let an angry Mother Nature have her way? Is this a disaster movie, an ironic tragedy, or both?

Grants are pouring into climate change studies. Academics are briefing legislators; the media is regularly revealing the story. Could it be that if we talk about it enough it won’t happen?

Chip Fletcher at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii says sea level around Hawaii is rising at 6 inches per century, less than the global average, but that is likely to increase.

Fletcher’s book, "Climate Change," is available on Amazon. Even with modest levels of rise, his maps at www.soest.hawaii.edu/coasts/sealevel are scary. Other scientists worry about how the deterioration of the Antarctic shelf will accelerate the level of rise.

But sea level rise isn’t nearly as dire as the strange weather. Remember Sandy and the tornadoes: We’ve seen some nasty weather around the world in recent years. The news seems more about the storms than climate change, but the connection is clear enough.

Hawaii itself is sitting pretty for storms worse in frequency and intensity than what we’ve seen before. Every day of good weather increases the probability of a bad storm tomorrow. Will it come to Oahu?

Despite the continuing efforts of Fletcher and his colleagues, we’re not actively preparing, either for sea level rise or the storms we know are coming.

Cities on the mainland and in Europe are busy building infrastructure to deal with climate change. This should likewise be first on our legislative agenda, way ahead of leaf blowers, GMO labeling and so many other tempests in our political teapot.

We need to adapt infrastructure along the shore, but some people won’t like that. Officials respond to the loudest voices, not the silent ones. No one wants to take political risk. But locking government up on dealing with climate change is downright dangerous.

Hawaii has problems doing long-range public works projects like the kind necessary for climate change. The longer we wait, the more expensive they will be and the less likely our economy can bear the costs.

We need statewide accord to avoid Venice West or Kauai Revisited. We need a full-court press in the Capitol and counties. Our leaders must find the funds, with all necessary tax increases, and we must make them do all the things that have to be done.

This is Hawaii’s greatest test. If we can’t do this, the natural disasters that are in store for us will wreck everything. We won’t be prepared, the cavalry won’t ride in and we’ll all pay an unimaginable price.

It’s time to get cracking. We need to change things if we want them to remain the same. We need to act quickly if we don’t want the children of Hawaii to resent our unwillingness to be inconvenienced. The 2014 Legislature will be a good time to work on this.

Of course, we can always complete the abdication, tell the children "shikata ga nai" ("it can’t be helped") at the departure gate and stay behind for the flood.

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Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on Hawaii’s tech and energy sectors of the economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.