Climate change is biggest crisis since WW2, Green leader Zack Polanski insists amid UK heatwave
Green leader Zack Polanski has insisted that the effects of climate change will be the biggest crisis that Britain has faced since the Second World War.
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Speaking on LBC's Iain Dale in the Evening, hosted by Simon Marks, the self-styled "eco-populist" said that "it almost doesn't matter what a politician thinks, it's what the science says" about the effects of soaring temperatures.
The London Assembly member added: "In the last couple of months alone, we've seen 3000 people die as a result of the extreme heat.
"Just yesterday, I was in Oxfordshire where I saw trees scorched. I saw cars burnt out, I saw local businesses decimated. In Suffolk, there was a fire that was the equivalent of 200 football pitches.
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"We might be uncomfortable right now in the extreme heat that we've had in the past couple of weeks, next year or the year after, it's not like it plateaus, it's not like this is the new normal. It is going to get worse and worse and worse until conditions are literally not habitable."
He then declared: "I think this will absolutely outshadow [sic] some of the threats that we faced since the Second World War."
When pressed by Simon about how he would go about tackling the issue, the Green leader said that fossil fuel companies are "behaving grotesquely" and suggested that they should not be "making a single penny's profit at the same time as we're seeing parts of our countryside on fire".
He told LBC: "Ultimately, we need to invest in renewables. We need to move away from fossil fuels. That being said, BP has doubled its profits during the Iran War. Barclays— its profits have gone up by a third, and we know that they've been advising clients to profiteer off the extreme heat.
"These are companies who are behaving grotesquely, incredibly irresponsibly, and I think there's a conversation to be had on should they be making a single penny's profit at the same time as we're seeing parts of our countryside on fire and people struggling to have spaces that are habitable."
He then said: "Ultimately, I think the fossil fuel companies are responsible and I think rather than making excess and record profits, we should be using that money and using it both for wildfire prevention and also to fund a fire service that is badly struggling."