SCOTLAND played a key role in spreading the coal-fired industrial revolution to the world. All over our country there were mines, with thousands of people going underground every day and whole towns and villages depending on what they brought back with them.

West Lothian alone once had 25 working mines. In the time since, a lot have been closed down and replaced with empty brownfield land, their lasting legacy is the stories and memories of those who experienced them first hand, and the spoil heaps that pepper our landscapes.

Drumduff Wind Farm opened in 2018 on the site of one of them. What had become a disused and neglected piece of land that had lain empty for years before was purchased by a renewable energy company.

I visited the site yesterday while I was on the campaign trail. It was a grey sky as my colleague Patrick Harvie and I walked between the turbines, but the story it told was one of hope, green change and environmental regeneration.

There are already three functioning turbines on the site, with another three to go live by 2026. They make for a proud sight, standing tall, at almost 120 metres, and providing clean, green and renewable energy to our grid.

I know how much work goes into a project like this. Before I was elected to parliament I worked in the renewables sector.

I had the privilege of working on the world’s most powerful floating tidal turbine. Combining the work of teams in factories and shipyards across Orkney, Dundee and Edinburgh, it was a tribute to the world-class engineering and fantastic potential that we have here in Scotland and that we need to mobilise.

It is an industry that is crying out for more skilled workers and support, and for governments who are prepared to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to our climate.

The next five years will be crucial if we are to have any hope of tackling the climate crisis and making the shift away from fossil fuels. Sites like Drumduff are a real-world example of what that transition can look like.

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The way we make the change should be a key election issue, as it is probably the most fundamental environmental question we will ever face. Yet, the climate has been almost entirely off the agenda, with a lot of the leader debates not even bothering to ask anything about it.

When it does come up, so much of the debate has been about the impacts of granting new oil and gas licences, with the other parties arguing among themselves about how many new oil fields they can give the green light to while only the Scottish Greens call for anything different. It’s a very short-term and defeatist approach that is as counterproductive for our economy as it is for our climate.

Scotland’s oil and gas production peaked in 1999, with thousands of jobs having been shedded since. Rather than doubling down on a declining sector, we should be investing in the jobs and industries of the future and making sure that we can use our abundant resources to lead Europe.

The empty coal fields and the economic depression they left behind tell us exactly what happens when we fail to transition sustainably. That wasn’t any kind of just transition, it was a catastrophe.

We can’t let future governments make the same disastrous decisions now. The next UK government won’t just need a policy, it will need a concrete plan for a just transition with workers at its heart.

In some respects, the shift is already underway. Analysis from Fraser of Allander shows that renewable jobs in Scotland increased by 50% in 2021 alone. That’s a huge change, and could be even greater with all levels of government working together to do more to encourage it.

Scotland is one of the first countries in the world to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity from renewables. We can build on that. Our goal has to be to aim for 100% renewable energy for everything – heat, transport and electricity.

Technology is changing around us. Heat pumps now offer an extremely efficient alternative to gas boilers, energy storage solutions are coming online, the price of solar panels has rapidly fallen and electric cars are pushing out the old-fashioned internal combustion engine.

This is exactly the progress we need to build on. But that needs parties to commit to it.

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It will mean making brave decisions. Road traffic emissions will not come down without price playing its part in demand management. Land use emissions will not come down without fundamental changes to what food we produce and how we subsidise it. Heating emissions will not come down without an ambitious programme to get us off the gas grid and face down the lobbyists for the status quo.

In an age when long-abandoned old brownfields can be reborn as wind farms, and coal can be replaced with clean, green energy, we can undo some of the damage of years of neglect and rebuild our country for the future.

Scotland has so much going for it, but the Tories and Labour would keep things as they are. I know that the future can be fairer, greener and far more prosperous. We have a huge potential, and I hope that when we vote next Thursday we can take a big step towards it.