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While COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, our climate emergency continues to worsen. Breaking news this week from climate scientists is that we have just completed the hottest 12-month period in recorded history.

The burning, melting, warming Arctic is clearly a sign that something is wrong and we need to stop investing in fossil fuels now.

The Arctic is boiling and the whole Arctic food chain is at risk. It is a stark warning and one that demands an immediate response by politicians and policy makers.

This is a big moment for Big Oil. Climate reality has finally caught up with BP’s corporate dreamland that it could carry on drilling forever.

We have leading experts warning that trillions could be at stake as the fossil fuel industry suffers a terminal and structural decline, but all governments do is pour billions more away on fossil fuels in COVID-19 recovery plans. It is nonsensical. There should be no Big Oil & Gas bailout.

More and more companies do not want to go back. They want a just transition moving forward. We have to make sure now that politicians meet rising corporate and political pressure. There can be no Big polluter bailout. Any post-COVID-19 economic recovery plan has to make central a managed transition away from fossil fuels to a cleaner, more sustainable, more just, future.

Exxon, which has been bruised, battered and bloodied by a catastrophic collapse in the oil price, and is haemorrhaging money, wants us all to drive over a climate cliff too. It is reckless corporate behaviour, which the executives must know will cost lives.

As I write, the strongest storm ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal has just made landfall in India and Bangladesh.

Despite COVID-19, activists plan to protest about Shell's climate failure at its Annual General Meeting tomorrow.

So the public want change for a post-COVID-19 future, towards a cleaner, fairer, greener society. Whereas politicians want to remain stuck in our polluted past. It is time to make our voices heard.