WE are surely all now aware of the dangers of climate change, with 97 per cent of scientists engaged on the issue being in broad agreement that it is happening, is man-made and is a huge threat to us and which is building up to be the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced.

It is also a matter of basic justice. The people suffering the most from climate change are among the poorest people in the world today; people such as farmers in Africa, finding that the climate is changing in ways which make their farming very difficult, or islanders on small low-lying Pacific islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, who are finding that they can no longer live on them.

These numbers will rise quickly if urgent action is not taken and could see at least 250 million people being climate refugees by the mid-21st century.

As a response to the growing crisis, thousands of members of The Climate Coalition, including a sizeable contingent from the North-East, will today be calling on our politicians to take urgent action on climate change at a mass lobby of Parliament.

We’ll be calling on the government to put a net zero greenhouse emissions target by 2045 into law now and start working towards this now.

We can only hope that the politicians listen. If not, the outlook for humanity may be very grim indeed.

Peter Sagar, Newcastle