You cannot unboil an egg. I know the expression is supposed to be 'you cannot unscramble an egg', and you would think that that would be more appropriate in a discussion about Cyclone Ita, but we have 22 boiled eggs in the fridge right now at home in Port Douglas.

If a category five cyclone is bearing down upon you and you do not know if your kitchen will be unusable, or when the power will go out, or for how long, boiling eggs is a good precaution.

If, however, the cyclone peters out to a category one cyclone when it finally hits, and all you get is fallen branches, not fallen trees and roofs gone, then you have 22 boiled eggs in the fridge which you would very much like to unboil.

Because, as one of six children of an Anglican clergyman, waste is not an option.

I only mention the eggs because they are a small example of the consequences of a major cyclone.

Of more import, of course, is the cost to business – particularly tourism and all the businesses that depend on it.

Also of great import was the media coverage.

We were glued to the media coverage, in between taking outdoor furniture indoors, taping up the windows, roping off large pot plants and the like.

Yet never once did I hear the words 'climate change'.

The response to extreme weather events by climate change sceptics and business-as-usual climate-change deniers is now down pat: "Well, you cannot assert that the climate is changing on the basis of an isolated event (insert event: cyclone. storm, bushfire, flood, drought). We have had these things before, you know."

And scientists will generally agree.

But this mantra has to stop.

For a start, with cyclones you can confidently say that every cyclone will now be more severe because of global warming. The oceans have warmed in the past 50 years. Cyclones get their energy from the heat of the ocean.

A lot of these things have exponential effect. A little extra heat means cyclones will be a lot more powerful. A little extra wind velocity means a lot more destruction. The power of wind is a cube function of its speed. Doubling the speed results in eight times the force. Trebling the speed equals 27 times the force.

So the difference between a category three and category five cyclone 500 kilometres off the Australian coastline is enormous. Once a category five is tracked, as was the case with Ita, very costly preventative measures get set in train, as they must.

My guess is that most people in Port Douglas blew between two and four days of their lives on cyclone preparation and returning to normal. Most businesses blew at least a day’s trade.

So there can be no more business as usual. Climate change has to be a major concern of business, particularly small business. Big business has the power and resources to adapt. Small businesses suffer badly at best or go broke at worse.

Cyclone Ita is a good case study. Most of the physical damage was done at Cooktown – some roofs blown off and so on.

It was a great backdrop for TV with a sub-text of: this was as bad as it got, so no cause for alarm.

But the great economic damage was done in Port Douglas and Cairns. The airport was closed and flights cancelled. All tourist tours were cancelled for two, three or four days depending on the trip. Restaurants and pubs closed. Shops closed.

Of course, there were some benefits to stores selling cyclone-prevention material – but not a genuine offset.

Climate change must be a matter of concern for small business. Yes, we know that Australia on its own cannot affect the global climate, but we can and should influence world opinion as we did with the bans on fluorocarbons. Those bans stopped the depletion of the ozone layer and prevented much cancer-causing radiation hitting the earth.

The world co-operated then and we should co-operate now. The voice of small business should rally on this. Much of big business likes a high carbon economy and it does not care about the consequences

Another thing Cyclone Ita tells us is that the 'populate the north' campaign is severely misguided. Nearly all cyclones in northern Australia pass over the coast harmlessly in unpopulated areas. We should keep it that way.

Cyclone Ita showed something else. In the aftermath of the cyclone, the forces of evolution were evident.

Tropical species – particularly in the 100-million-year-old Daintree -- took the cyclone without damage. After that period of time all the cyclone-susceptible species have been wiped out. Introduced eucalypts from elsewhere in Australia took a hammering.

And on the human front, all the successful behaviours (taping windows, turning fridges to high, filling wheelie bins with water) – things that evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins calls memes – are passed on from one generation of cyclone preparers to another.

Meanwhile, the modern 24-hour every-second cycle news media is out of its depth. How can it cope with a cyclone, with all the potential for newsworthy fast-moving death and destruction,  moving at such a glacial pace that every element of the story is hammered repetitively to the point of tedium? How can it cope with all the pot-boiling lead-up only to be confronted with the displeasing reality that when the really newsworthy event hits, necessity demands that the camera crew not be there, but tucked into the cyclone shelter?

Having seduced the audience into the prospect of mayhem, the television media cannot deliver at the critical time because it is at the mercy of the very thing they are reporting, so they must scurry for safety and blame it all on nature.

But the story must not be one of humankind helpless before the force of nature.

We have now contributed to the strength of some of these forces. We must recognise that and lead, join or cajole the world into doing something about it.

In the meantime, does anyone have a recipe for the palatable use of boiled eggs.