I joined the protests in Monmouth last Friday to support calls for decisive action on the growing climate crisis. A passing woman told me that we protesters wanted to force her to ‘live in the dark ages and travel by horse and cart’ - the same idea that our MP, David Davies, has been spreading in the pages of the Beacon. I’d encourage anyone who believes Mr Davies to talk to their grandchildren, to see that existential anxiety that climate change causes them is compounded by adults denying and ridiculing the crisis.

I was heartened to see so many young people across the world are able to accept the inconvenient truth of climate change. They realise that denial is going to cost them and future generations much more in the long run. Accepting the facts will allow us to move on and develop new, circular economies and post-fossil fuel jobs, vehicles and materials. Protesters are calling on governments to accept and grow with the challenge, to stop subsidising the pollution from a dying fossil fuel industry and to move on from a linear economic model that inextricably links our jobs and personal freedoms to climate change. 

Opening the UN Climate Action Summit in New York this week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged that “there is a cost to everything, but the biggest cost is doing nothing and denying what is plain as day, that we are in a deep climate hole and to get out, we must first stop digging.” Wales could be leading the way back out of that hole, if only our politicians didn’t hide behind convenient fictions.

Madeleine Boase and Anna Hill (Monmouth)