We can’t wait until 2024 to tackle the climate crisis – let’s fight for a green new deal now | Keir Starmer

Labour may have lost the election but we are still a movement that can fight for change, and that starts at Cop26

We are on the threshold of an extraordinary decade. Before now the effects of climate and environmental breakdown were mapped on to the future, but today we can see them all around us.

Across England and Wales, towns and villages are under floodwater; fires have raged from Australia to the Amazon; and globally we're in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, in which we stand to lose up to a million species. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tackling this crisis will require "far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" for which "the next few years are probably the most important in our history".