As British high streets and farm fields lie under water this week, Boris Johnson has repeatedly been urged to put on his wellies, go out and listen to flood victims.

So far though, his response has been more about tin ears than rubber boots: during Storm Dennis the prime minister was reportedly holed up in a 17th-century mansion in the Kent countryside.

As even Nigel Farage and the Sun have pointed out, this is a pathetic failure of leadership. On a more sinister level, it is entirely consistent with a darkly elitist view of how to deal with the climate crisis.

The question of climate priorities will grow increasingly important. Which communities will the government defend and which will they abandon?

This threat to human civilisation ought to merit collaborative action at the highest global level. This seemed to be the case in the 1980s and 90s – those halcyon days of the “international community” – when world leaders stepped up to reverse the depletion of the ozone layer and put in place new United Nations structures to address the then nascent threats of global warming and biodiversity loss.

Since then, decades of fossil fuel-funded denial and a shift in the political and economic landscape have taken their toll.

Today, a growing number of governments prefer to stress how impotent they are in the face of market and natural forces, while multibillionaires – who are more powerful than ever – have started building apocalypse sanctuaries, applying for New Zealand citizenship or backing politicians who promise to erect higher physical and legal walls at their borders. Anything to keep out the weather and the climate-affected masses.

Outright denial of climate science is now almost impossible. In the UK, the lengthening summer heatwaves and more intense winter deluges have seen to that. They have also demonstrated that walls and money are not enough.

The environment secretary, George Eustice, admitted as much this week, when he said: “We’ll never be able to protect every single household just because of the nature of climate change and the fact that these weather events are becoming more extreme.”

London, July 2019. ‘Outright denial of climate science is now almost impossible. In the UK, the lengthening summer heatwaves and more intense winter deluges have seen to that.’ Photograph: John Keeble/Getty Images

This raises the question of climate priorities, which will grow increasingly important as floods and heatwaves affect more people and property. Which communities will the government defend and which will they abandon?

More importantly, how will it balance the resources for adaptation infrastructure (such as sea walls, flood barriers, drainage channels ) with those for mitigation (cutting emissions through forests, wetlands, regulation of petrochemical firms and a transition to renewable energy)?

This is a choice between tackling the short-term local symptoms or the long-term global causes. Traditionally that has been the political dividing line between the right and the left. Today, it is the difference between climate apartheid – effectively excluding those affected on economic or racial grounds – and climate solidarity.

The UK has steered a pragmatic course between these two extremes until now. Most politicians in this country recognise the most cost-efficient way of dealing with global warming is to cut emissions now to avoid far more expensive damages in the future. On the left and right, there has been a sense of social responsibility and national pride that Britain initiated the Industrial Revolution and should take the lead in clearing up the mess it left behind.

But will that consensus hold as the domestic costs of climate action ramp up? Or will the free-market extremists in the government focus on protecting wealthy and economically productive regions rather than sharing the burdens and thinking about the future?

This sodden week alone does not answer those questions, but it is worrying that we have an environment minister apparently ready to abandon some areas, and a prime minister who has cut himself off from those suffering the consequences. The country and the world needs a leader who steps out and steps up on climate. So far, Johnson has done neither.

• Jonathan Watts is the Guardian’s global environment editor