As the apartheid regime in South Africa entered its death throes the octogenarian president of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, became increasingly worried that he would die before Mandela was freed, apartheid was vanquished and a new democratic South Africa was born via the ballot box. He therefore took to haranguing, and only in a semi-friendly way, the staff of the AAM when he visited us at the movement's headquarters in an old piano workshop in Mandela Street, Camden, London. To help reinforce his key message that we all needed to work harder he always told us the same, short, humorous tale. On a “recent” visit to his spiritual home – the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield near Leeds – he recounted that over breakfast he and his fellow octogenarians had fallen into a conversation about the pros and cons of buying a new suit at such an advanced age, whereupon the oldest member of the community, who was in his nineties, piped up “New suit? New suit? I worry about buying green bananas”.

When it comes to climate breakdown we are without question in “green banana” territory. There really is very little time left. In the words of Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations, “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning. It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C and avoid the very worst of climate change. But only with dramatic, immediate climate action”.