The hailstorm that hit Lismore on Tuesday was the week's talking point.

It was what the Prime Minister likes to call a barbecue stopper, especially if you live in Lismore, because nothing stops a barbecue quite like giant chunks of ice hurtling to earth at 300 kmh. At least they would tenderise your meat.

Usually, hailstones in your bog-standard freak storm are the size of golf balls. It's such a common comparison that it's easy to imagine them coming down with dimples and a Nike logo.

It was soon apparent, however, that the Lismore storm was different. Early reports said the stones were the size of softballs. By the evening news they were the size of grapefruit. By the time the story was being told in the pubs of the Far North Coast on Friday night they were no doubt the size of prize-winning pumpkins. But whatever the truth of it, they were big and they were destructive.

The repair bill to St Andrew's Anglican Church alone is expected to exceed $1 million, which is about $250,000 per parishioner if church attendances up there are anything like the ones in Sydney.

The Sweet Pea internet/gelato cafe had been open for only a few hours on its very first day of business when the storm smashed its roof in and rained on its parade, The Northern Rivers Echo reported. The power went out, too, so the owners gave away all their ice-cream to rain-soaked customers. It was quite an opening-day special.

I happened to be on a rural property near Lismore during the storm, and while it didn't hail in the hills I can report that the black sky and gale-force winds were impressively apocalyptic.

We love reading about the weather as much as we love talking about it. Weather stories are often the most popular on news websites such as smh.com.au, where it's possible to monitor exactly what people are reading. Really juicy weather stories have even been known to outrank Paris Hilton yarns and stories about kinky sex. If Hilton ever had kinky sex in a violent hailstorm the internet traffic would be so high the whole world wide web would crash.

But all this wild weather stuff is becoming so commonplace it is a bit passe. Soon it will be the mild conditions that capture our imagination. "Gentle breeze wafts into Port Macquarie" the headlines will scream; "Drizzle dampens washing on Katoomba clotheslines"; "Storm warning: hailstones the size of hailstones".

"They were like little white peas," witnesses will say. "They hit the lawn, bounced once, and just lay there. After a while the sun came out and they melted. I took the kids inside. It was terrifying."

Climate change, as predicted, is producing more extreme weather events. And I'm not just saying that because of recent events in Lismore and the Hunter. Sir John Holmes, the UN's undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said this month that the cumulative effect of a record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year was the equivalent of a "mega disaster".

"We are seeing the effects of climate change," he told The Guardian. "This is here and now, this is with us already."

The UN had issued a record 13 emergency appeals so far this year, 12 of which were climate related, Holmes said. Flooding in Africa was the worst anyone could remember, yet appeals for donations to help Ocha in Ghana, where floods had left 400,000 people homeless, had fallen flat.

That's hardly surprising when people in the West are inundated with requests for charitable donations and increasingly have their own flood damage and smashed car and house windows to pay for. "Money for Africa? How about some money for me?" they can tell the cold-callers. "We had hailstones the size of pumpkins here last week. Prize-winning ones."

Holmes has called for action to mitigate the impact that climate change is having. "You can't actually stop disasters happening but you can do a lot to reduce their impact and reduce people's vulnerability to them by making sure people don't live on the coast or river plains, and that roads are raised and dams are in reasonable shape," he said.

We also need to do something to stop climate change getting worse. And we have to do it now.

We're going to be facing challenges on many fronts. It's a time that demands imaginative leadership from brave, selfless men and women; leaders of vision and fortitude; leaders who will put the long term before the short, the wellbeing of future generations before the desire for power and political gain, and the demands of the environment that sustains us before the greed of shareholders and company executives. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present: Australia's politicians.

The Prime Minister's idea of tackling climate change is taking a sweater to the cricket in case it turns chilly. The minister for the environment, Malcolm Turnbull, is a businessman; say no more.

State Labor is in love with coalmines and development. Federal Labor's compromised spokesman for the environment, Peter Garrett, has backed the destruction of Tasmanian wilderness and surely can't sleep at night when he knows full well the beds are burning.

Here's hoping he gets the chance to make decisions based on his principles after Labor wins the election. Kevin '07 needs to start thinking about '08, and beyond.

swebster@fairfax.com.au