MPs like Andrea Leadsom say they want to save the planet – they could start by listening to climate change protesters

Reading Andrea Leadsom’s letter in the Evening Standard (Andrea Leadsom: You’re protesting in the wrong city and country, Extinction Rebellion), it is difficult not to be completely baffled by the arguments raised by the Conservative MP and business secretary.

When Leadsom condemns the Extinction Rebellion protesters in the streets of our capital, she seems to have forgotten that the scientific community has warned us of the real, dangerous implication of climate chaos for years. But what has been done by politicians around the world to heed this repeatedly given advice?

The answer, sadly, is too little too late. Politicians across the globe have not understood the urgency that the climate chaos requires from us. They have not understood the key message that reports like the IPCC’s report last year were trying to convey to us: we are reaching a tipping point for the future of our planet.

Politics should be the art of making difficult decisions for the wellbeing of society, not just surviving until the next election cycle. We need to be bold in our approach to climate chaos. We need to be radical and decisive in taking the necessary steps.

The small incremental steps taken by our governments in the last 20 years are not enough and don’t deserve the rhetorical pats on the shoulder so well described by Leadsom in her letter.

As highlighted by the Committee on Climate Change last week, the UK is set to miss the goal to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, undermining Leadsom’s claim of British leadership in tackling climate change. It’s not enough that “we will continue to break renewables records in the years to come”, as the business secretary wrote in her letter. If the Tories want to show genuine leadership, then they could implement measures such as a Green New Deal, commit to net-zero emissions by 2030, and stop airport expansion. These are just some of the measures that would prove to the world that Britain is not just paying lip service to tackle climate change but it is taking the necessary decisions to tackle the chaos.

We should not be content with the current environmental policies, but be more radical, more decisive in taking the steps that for so long we have been afraid to take.

Politicians never tire of praising the industrial revolution and the way in which it transformed this country. But we can now see the deleterious impact of our economic system on the planet, so we should be putting the same energy, efforts and economic resources towards helping to mitigate against its effects, rather than focusing solely on its triumphs.

How can we achieve that? By creating a new Green revolution. One that puts environmental and social justice at its core. Take the suffragette movement and anti-apartheid campaigners, for example, both deemed to be "illegal" protesters at one stage, before their hand in fighting for justice ultimately changed our society changed for the better. When it comes to the planet, those at the forefront of climate justice should be considered just as integral to creating much-needed change. The survival of the world depends on it.

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party