WELCOME COP26 delegates, activists and dubious corporate sponsors. You’ve arrived in Scotland at quite the time. As a timely but grim reminder of what’s at stake these next two weeks, our southern border is currently underwater.

I know you won’t be stepping into this country blind to what is going on here. While the UK is entirely myopic and uninterested in the goings on of our neighbours, we know the same can’t be said for you – but if you are going to be here for the next two weeks, there are a few things that you should know about Scotland, Westminster and Britain’s failure to meaningfully tackle the climate crisis to date.

Firstly, know that the Prime Minister’s popularity in England is as baffling to most Scots as it will be for you. We’d apologise on behalf of the UK for his behaviour in these coming weeks, but we didn’t vote for him either.

And while climate change may be the topic du jour, that won’t stop Boris Johnson from strangling as much political capital from the proceedings as possible at a time when Britain has become a social pariah – and Scotland is near evenly split over the question of leaving the UK.

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Left unchecked, Johnson’s habitual need to bolster his Unionist credentials and post-Brexit Brand Britain will relegate our last, best hope for humanity to the fringe. However, if he can hold himself back from making quips about “hair shirt-wearing, tree-hugging, mung bean-munching eco-freaks” long enough to actually listen to our international delegates, the reduction in hot air alone may be enough to single-handedly halt global warming in its tracks.

You should also know that, for all of their words on the horrors of ecological breakdown, the Houses of Parliament are deeply in bed with the biggest contributors to catastrophic levels of carbon emissions. In the House of Lords alone (yes, in the 21st century we still have that) as many as 43 peers have major financial investments in the oil and gas industry.

Meanwhile, the regressive tax regime of the ruling Conservative Party has made the business of planetary destruction a lucrative one indeed.

Thanks to UK Government-enforced tax breaks between 2018 and 2020, oil and gas giants Shell and BP managed to avoid paying a single penny in corporation tax on North Sea oil, all while handing over £44 billion in dividends to their shareholders. Together they manage to produce over 1.7bn tonnes of greenhouse gases a year.

Even when it came to appointing a representative ahead of COP26, Johnson found a finger puppet when we needed a fighter. In Anne-Marie Trevelyan we have the perfect example of conservative climate hypocrisy – a “climate champion” who supports fracking and opposes wind farms. What else could we have expected from a political party whose membership, according to polling data, still rejects the established science on climate change?

So whatever you hear from Boris Johnson in these next two weeks, understand that beneath the Etonian braying and pompous Ancient Greek anecdotes, his words are as empty as his head.

Of course, dishonest and meandering politicians are hardly a uniquely British phenomenon. I don’t doubt for a second that every one of you who have made your way to Glasgow understands only too well that what the political class say about climate change is a polluted and plastic-filled ocean away from what they actually do to address it – particularly when financial interests are at stake.

From the beginning, corporations smelling an opportunity to launder their filthy reputations have sought to make the Glasgow summit as much of a mockery as it was in Madrid previously. Despite an early promise to keep big polluters at arm’s length from the conference, inevitably the Conservative Party’s devotion to the interests of big business led to a little bending of expectations.

The 11 companies selected as principal partner’s to the summit have totalled more carbon emissions between them in 2020 than the entirety of the UK, with Scottish Power’s parent company Iberdrola coming top of the list for emissions (not to mention a litany of controversies around trade relations and human rights).

None of that even begins to address the fact that, as Glasgow’s streets were polished to a standard as alien to the city as an elected Tory MP, both Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson were outdoing themselves in talking around the potential Cambo oil field in the North Sea.

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Deep beneath the ocean just 75 miles to the west of Shetland lies an ecological blunder of severe proportions; a 25-year extension to oil extraction that runs counter to every lacklustre promise to take the climate disaster seriously. Where we have needed strong leadership, we have had tip-toed concessions and, in the case of Johnson, calculated ignorance.

So welcome to Britain: a country on the edge of breaking apart, with a press so hostile to progressive politics that every step toward stopping climate change is branded as virtue-signalling; a kingdom with a blundering Prime Minister who sees in this summit only an opportunity to exploit, and a political class with a vested interest in keeping the oil flowing; a political union ruled by a monarch who talks about climate justice while lobbying the Scottish Government to remain exempt from new climate laws.

With you here, my friends, there is hope still that things can change. November 6 will be a global day of action, to call for governments and corporations to commit to limiting global temperatures to 1.5C. The streets of Glasgow must scream and move, to push our reluctant politicians into taking a necessary stand for climate justice. Join me, and let’s make some noise.