I said that we can't afford to wait, but the declarations we've made and the conferences that await us afford us an opportunity to be radical, to be innovative and to be trailblazing, because urgency is required. The climate emergency is already hitting our communities hard. The Rhondda, Llanrwst, Ystrad Mynach—streets in almost every corner of our country have faced horrific floods. Homes and businesses have been destroyed, and the threat of landslips from unsafe coal tips looms over our heads. Wildfires and droughts have become commonplace, and temperatures that break new records and wreak destruction are set every year, inexorably rising like the seas at our feet.

Just as some things go up, so others go down. The decline in biodiversity on our planet is set to wipe out a million species. In Wales, the RSPB and other partners have warned us in their State of Nature 2019 report that 666 species in Wales are at threat from extinction, and 73 are already gone, a calamity we shouldn't just note and move on from. Those species have left us because of how we live our lives. Butterflies have declined by 52 per cent since 1976, and 30 per cent of terrestrial mammal species are at risk of disappearing from Wales altogether, like the red squirrel and water voles. Dirprwy Lywydd, the science is clear, and Wales is feeling the impacts of these co-existing crises, the one that charts forever upwards, the other that pulls us down into the depths of loss.

So, what can we do to change this? Well, the second part of our motion sets out a series of bold and ambitious actions that Wales can and must take in order to grapple with the severity of these crises. We call on the Government to maximise our nation's potential for renewable energy development by establishing a state-backed energy development company. We call for the development of a net-zero workforce in the energy sector, the expansion of renewable capacity through investment in upgrades to the electricity grid, a strategy for Welsh ports that would support the offshore wind sector, and a marine development plan that will provide certainty to energy developers and ensure that renewable developments don't get planned in the areas that are the most ecologically sensitive.

I said that we have resources at our disposal, but not all Welsh resources are under our control, which is why we furthermore call on the Welsh Government to seek the full devolution of the management of the Crown Estate and the full devolution of energy powers, to ensure we have all levers we need to tackle these crises head on.

Now, a lot of what we're talking about in this debate will be on a massive scale, global targets and pathways and plans that stretch decades into the future, but the impacts of Government inaction in these areas aren't only measured in graphs or numbers or pylons in the sky. People's lives on the ground are affected in a devastatingly personal way too. The recent energy crisis that we're still in the midst of has underlined our dependency on markets and resources that are outside our control, and how susceptible we are to their shocks. Customers face higher bills and the industry faces supply cuts and shut downs. Families least able to afford higher prices will be hit most harshly. The floods I mentioned earlier don't just devastate houses, they rip people's lives apart. That is the consequence of inaction.  

Dirprwy Lywydd, when we had our debate in June, which ended in the Senedd declaring a nature emergency, Mike Hedges said that so many beloved creatures known to us from children's books could soon disappear from our world. And I think that that image of storybooks is compelling. What storybooks, what history books, do we want our grandchildren to read declaring what we did in this moment, when so much could still be changed, if there is paper left to write on? Do we want the narrative to unravel, to trap future generations in a dystopia of scorched earth, depleted landscapes and ever-rising tides? Or do we want a page to be turned today, a chapter opened that will allow those children to tell a tale of triumph? The eyes of the future are on us today. Their destiny is in our hands. Let's start their stories now while we still can.