AS children and young people around the world continue to strike, march and raise their voices in protest against global inaction on the climate crisis, and the words “climate emergency” have been etched into the collective imagination, it is clear that environmental justice is an issue whose time has come.

For those who have lost their lives, homes or livelihoods due to heatwaves, wildfires, drought, storms or flooding since the world’s temperature rose by one degree, this moment is long overdue. Climate change is not a hypothetical to be prevented but a reality which we must adapt to. Minimising the damage for future generations is no longer a choice but a necessity for survival.

Here in Scotland, with our characteristically dull weather, the catastrophic impacts of global warming may not feel urgent, but the science tells us that the entire planet is at serious risk within a matter of generations.

It is thought that burning all the world’s reserves of oil, gas and coal could result in an average rise in temperature of more than eight degrees Celsius and a rise of hundreds of feet in sea levels.

More disturbing than the prospect of our planet’s demise, though, is that none of this is a surprise – at least, it shouldn’t be. It is now known that reports on the severe environmental impacts of burning fossil fuels were presented to American oil giant Exxon Mobil in the 1950s, to the American Petroleum Institute in 1968 and at numerous other points throughout the 1970s and 1980s to the people who had the power to hold their hands up and put a stop to the damage.

Instead, those same rich and influential corporations used their position – and millions of dollars – to sow the seeds of doubt about climate science. Just this year, a report by InfluenceMap found that the world’s five leading oil and gas companies were spending $200 million annually on lobbying against policies to address climate change.

When so many voices rush to deny or downplay the facts in any situation, the shrewd question to ask is: “What do they stand to lose from the truth?”

In the case of the climate crisis, the answer is obvious: money. It is surely the greatest testament to the all-consuming power of corporate greed that human beings have lined their wallets for more than 50 years in full knowledge that they were slowly but surely destroying the Earth.

And the oil and gas sector has been far from unique in prioritising its own profit margins over people or planet. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the meat industry is responsible for around 23% of global warming, making this a leading cause of the human carbon footprint.

Other reports have estimated the industry’s share as higher still. But instead of investing time and energy in adapting to more sustainable forms of food production, the agriculture industry has forked out millions to lobby politicians.

A Politico investigation this year revealed that the US Department of Agriculture had withheld numerous reports on climate change which would have reflected badly on the sector.

In 2016, the UK Government cut its recycling targets after it came under pressure from the British Plastics Federation, while the Scottish Government has been repeatedly lobbied by supermarkets and drinks companies in an attempt to block its Deposit Return Scheme for plastic bottles.

The examples are endless and, ultimately, unsurprising. In a world of free-market capitalism, companies can and will continue to use their influence in any way they can to suck every last ounce of profit out of consumers.

This is why it is so important that in this moment of mass awareness and unprecedented concern for the dire impacts of climate change, we do not sidestep the unavoidable truth: there is no environmental justice without economic justice. There is no bright, green, capitalist future.

The exploitation of the environment and its natural resources has gone hand in hand with the exploitation of workers. Both are equally motivated by profit and the two are inextricably linked.

Announcing the Scottish Government’s latest Programme for Government early this month, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon put great emphasis on environmental issues and set out a plan which she said “lays the foundations for a new Scottish green deal”. This included a number of positive steps which can’t be overlooked, but there is a long way to go and very little time in which to get there.

Perhaps the most disappointing feature of Nicola Sturgeon’s speech was when she said that the Scottish Government would continue to support the oil and gas industry on the basis that withdrawing support would result in higher emissions by importing from other countries.

This statement doesn’t take into account the fact that Scotland already has more oil reserves than it can afford to burn. The policy of maximum extraction which Oil and Gas UK promotes is entirely unnecessary on any basis other than profit-making because, if such a quantity of fossil fuels were to be burned, the planet would be put at enormous additional risk. Is this what the response to an “emergency” looks like?

CRITICISING the lack of meaningful action on the climate crisis to date, think tank Common Weal said: “If we declare a ‘roof fire emergency’ the response should not be to sit back down in the living room until the bedroom catches fire too.” Let’s take that further and imagine that, while consulting with everyone in the living room on their views on how to proceed, the rogue roof arsonist is invited in for a chat about how they can make a truly positive contribution by setting smaller fires in future. Not the immediate future, of course, but at some point.

This is the equivalent of the Scottish Government saying that the oil and gas sector has “a bigger role to play” in addressing climate change and that any support will now be conditional on its “actions to help ensure a sustainable transition”. Call me cynical, but based on the entire history of the industry, my expectations of what those actions might look like are not high.

If the crisis we are faced with is to be kept at bay and the future of our world protected, governments around the world will have to be brave in standing up to the multinational corporations which have, for too many years, been allowed to have free reign at all costs.

It’s on us as members of the public to seize this moment to make sure that the political class knows that it has more to lose by alienating an electorate who have decided that enough is enough. We all must confront the harsh reality that we have not reached this point by accident and if we ignore the root causes we will fail to produce meaningful solutions.

The fact is that responding to climate change necessitates a radically different kind of economy. This means that some industries will suffer and will have to reimagine themselves as something else entirely. However, if they are simply allowed to imagine new and apparently greener modes of exploitation, we will have failed to learn the important lessons that this “emergency” should, by now, have made abundantly clear.

Of course, to make any possible action on the part of the Scottish Government and every single local authority, business, organisation and individual in Scotland worth more than a drop in the ocean, this will also require similar changes on a global scale. But we do have the chance to send a strong message through our actions. If a tiny but wealthy country like Scotland, which is already leading on renewable energy, can’t take a principled stance on this, you can be sure that nobody else is going to.

As Glasgow prepares to host the UN Climate Change Summit in 2020, let’s take this chance to push Scottish, UK and international political leaders to take this crisis as an opportunity to change a system which was broken all along.