The following is a column featured in last week's SNJ by Molly Scott Cato, a Green MEP, economist and environmental activist who lives in Stroud.

This summer’s extraordinary weather is a hot topic across the globe.

Drought has destroyed crops, deadly fires have raged and lives have been lost.

And now scientists have warned of ‘hothouse earth’ – runaway warming that could lead to rapidly rising sea levels and extreme weather.

All this should ring political alarm bells.

But the UK government is going backwards on the policies needed to address this planetary emergency.

They have abandoned support for renewable energy, kick-started a whole new fossil industry in fracking and recklessly given the green light to a third runway at Heathrow – with the support of many Labour MPs.

We need to fundamentally change the political climate and Greens are the only party with the bold policy solutions needed to prevent climate breakdown.

We must leave fossil fuels in the ground, which means an end to all fossil fuel subsidies and a ban on fracking. Instead we must launch a ‘Blue New Deal’ capitalising on the UK’s abundant offshore wind, wave and tidal power resources.

We must also restore subsidies for wind and solar with an enhanced rate for community-owned installations. Transport is another area that needs turning around, we need to scrap all big road and airport infrastructure projects and the environmental vandalism that is HS2.