IT has become obvious to most of us that we are living through historic times. 2019 contained events that will be studied in future textbooks. It looks like 2020 will be the same.

For those of us who care about the excluded and disenfranchised, these are dark times. Racism has been normalised again, social media has distorted debate and people are even calling for equality laws to be repealed.

I take comfort in the fact that progress is rarely a smooth path, that history shows there are many fits and starts along the way and change can come very slowly. History also shows that when it happens it can happen very quickly. This is about stepping back and looking at the direction of travel and finding comfort in that.

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For example, in times like this I think of how feminism waxed and waned throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that the rights that were being fought for were realised: votes for women, education for women, property rights and divorce rights for women. Even now, 100 years on, we don’t have equality and in many parts of the world women’s rights are being pushed back. The fight goes on.

And so it is with all progressive politics at the moment. Things have got worse for anyone disabled, underemployed, unemployed or homeless. Anyone who encounters a state school, an NHS hospital, a library, community centre or women’s refuge will see how far things have been rolled back. We’ve lost a great many of the things once regarded as British institutions.

The great nationalised companies, the Royal Mail, National Rail and much legal aid. These are all the things that our parents’ and grandparents’ taxes built up for the good of all. They have been sold off for the good of a few well-connected tax dodgers. By all reports, the jewel in the crown – the NHS – is next.

But there is another retrograde threat coming at us, and this one is coming for all of humanity.

The climate emergency will deepen inequality even further, initially impacting those who are worst placed to withstand it.

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I encourage everybody to Google where the sea level will be in 2050 at an assumed four degrees of global warming. Where I live in Leith, in Edinburgh, every home and business further out than Leith Links will be under water in 30 years if the climate catastrophe isn’t taken seriously.

Thirty years isn’t so far in the future. Today’s climate strikers will be my age in 30 years. At four degrees of warming there are no coral reefs left, there are worldwide food and water shortages, and, of course, a massive global refugee crisis as people’s homes and livelihoods are flooded.

Thirty years is not far off, but the timescale we have to do something about this is even sooner. In December the Committee on Climate Change warned that the next 12 months will be critical.

The first of those months is upon us.

That means that right now politics can’t be the preserve of a few, despite what Boris Johnson wants. In these historic times, dealing with these world-changing events and policies that mean the difference between life and death, politics needs to be everybody’s business. Now, more than ever, we need to resist the politics of intolerance which enables the rich to get richer while hope grows feebler for everyone else. We need to resist the ongoing destruction of our life support system.

It is no coincidence that those who deny the overwhelming science about the climate emergency are the same that advocate the unbridled deregulated markets that cause such stark inequality. They are the same people who say equality has gone too far, who rail angrily against progress.

These are the voices who blame immigrants for all ills, who want to separate the LGBT community. It is the politics of divide and conquer.

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That is why resistance must be about the opposite. We can resist by reaching out to the community around us. It can be as close to home as supporting a charity for the homeless in your area or signing a petition to improve a local bike path.

It can be as active as going along to community meetings or protests or it can be by joining a political party and joining the fray. Whatever it is, what we do now matters. It matters for you and it matters for the people around you and it matters for the future.

Scotland may yet be able to chart a different path from the rest of the UK, but even if we do we must continue the progressive journey, resisting those who would hold us back. The rebellion starts now.