In the medieval legend made famous by the brothers Grimm, the German town of Hamelin is besieged by a plague of rats, until the mysterious pied piper appears and agrees, for a fee, to rid them of the infestation. The mayor then reneges on payment and the piper exacts a savage revenge on the town’s ingrates by luring away their children, who are never seen again.

The tale could also be an allegory for today’s grim intergenerational smash-and-grab – the global economy. As environmentalist Paul Hawken put it: “We have an economy where we steal the future, sell it in the present, and call it GDP.”

Like the hapless mayor of Hamelin, elected officials all over the world are today blindly pursuing growth-as-usual, while the gathering climate catastrophe rumbles ever closer. We adults may, if we’re lucky, get to die peacefully in our beds, but it’s our children who will be left to pay the ecological piper.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Veteran climate scientist James Hansen and his granddaughter, Sophie Kivlehan, who is among 21 young plaintiffs bringing a lawsuit against the US federal government over its CO2 emissions. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

As COP23 negotiators meet this week in another German town, the children are fighting back. Sophie Kivlehan, the 18-year-old granddaughter of former Nasa scientist Prof James Hansen, spoke in Bonn of her anger and fear “at the problems that greedy and foolish adults have created”. She is one of a group of 20 youths who filed the Juliana v US climate lawsuit in Oregon in 2015.

Despite determined efforts by lobbyists to quash the case, it is now set to be heard in February 2018. “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society” was the view of US district judge Ann Aiken, in denying motions filed by the Trump administration opposing the suit.

Last month NGO Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) filed a legal challenge against the Irish government over its failure to take steps to honour its climate commitments under the Paris agreement, and so endangering future generations. The FIE suit is modelled on a successful similar action taken in the Dutch courts by the Urgenda Foundation. They ruled in 2015 that the Dutch government had acted unlawfully in failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by 2020. Similar cases are being brought in New Zealand, India, the Philippines and South Africa, among others.

Despite being on track for climate neutrality by 2030, the Norwegian government is being sued by citizen activists for issuing oil drilling licences in the Arctic Ocean, which make a mockery of its supposed domestic green credentials.

Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the global south, weighed in powerfully on the moral arguments against the havoc to the biosphere wrought by neoliberalism: “The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market.”

Geophysicist Dr Brad Werner made waves five years ago with the publication of his paper titled: Is Earth F**ked? (the asterisks are his). When pressed for an answer to his own question, he ventured: “more or less”. In his analysis, the system itself is incapable of internally responding to the deepening ecological crises that encircle civilisation. The only possible hope, he suggested, lay in active resistance. He identified this as “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers and other activist groups”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Climate protesters in Bonn. Photograph: Philipp Guelland/EPA

Those who resist face arrest, harassment, and worse. Almost four murders a week of environmental and land defenders were recorded in 2016.

With politicians failing to step up to the climate challenge, what are the alternatives? One intriguing experiment in direct democracy has just concluded in Ireland, where a government-appointed Citizens’ Assembly composed of a nationally representative group of people selected at random heard detailed expert testimony on climate change from a range of experts. No lobbyists or politicians were allowed in the room.

The result: 13 recommendations for sharply enhanced climate action were overwhelmingly endorsed early this month, including citizens being personally prepared to pay more tax on high-carbon activities. The recommendations will now be discussed in parliament. Democracy may be dysfunctional, but rumours of its death have, perhaps, been exaggerated.