Crises don't abate when it's inconvenient for them to be continuing. If we ignore them, they don't go away, and the cost-of-living crisis is not a crisis that has paled in significance, as one broadcaster put it, because of the events of the past week, nor had the turmoil and panic felt by people across the UK been put on hold when the Westminster Government put itself on hold over the summer. No, crises are all-consuming.

People talk about the winter of discontent, but what we've had in this all-consuming crisis mode is a summer of disregard, of indifference being shown by those in power, of an absent Cabinet, of one tarnished Prime Minister handing power to another who is completely untested and who refused for months to tell us how she would deal with this crisis.

But now, at last, we know how Truss plans to keep the most desperate people alive over winter, unless, of course, they happen to have the misfortune of being on pre-payment meters or being off the gas grid. Bills for everyone else will be frozen at an agonising level that will push people into excruciating debt. Destitution, real destitution is just at the door for thousands.

If the price cap is not brought back down to pre-April levels as we have advocated, people will die avoidable deaths. That really is what we're talking about here, and not only is this cap too high, the way that Truss has determined it will be funded is underhanded. Energy firms who've made billions in excess, unearned profits will keep those profits. They won't face an extra tax on them. Instead, taxpayers will subsidise the bills. We'll keep paying through the nose, just drawn out over a longer period. The wealth at the top, that avaricious, immoral wealth, stays intact, untouched, untapped by people at the bottom.

Is it any wonder that people say, 'Enough is enough'? Enough of this topsy-turvy system where Westminster favours the short-term fixes of fracking just to keep this moment in time and that glut of money fixed for the shareholders, those murky money makers that nobody sees, with no thought given to the future, the skies they're clogging, the earth they are poisoning. They failed to keep the stocks of gas we need because of this obsession with the here and now, maximising the money while the good times roll, with scant concern for what happens when the music stops.

How differently might we have fared in Wales had the Swansea bay tidal lagoon been given permission? With powers over energy production, with proceeds from the Crown Estate, how differently might things look if we had a system that invested profits in our collective future, rather than locking them out of reach? Instead, of course the richest households will have twice as much help as the poorest, of course Truss's Cabinet is pouncing on this chance to undermine net zero—anything that keeps that moneyball spilling for the richest. The rest of it, to them, is just white noise.

So, the uproar of dread, the clamour of consternation voiced by millions has never touched them, and they are deaf to the pleas of our planet. But that climate catastrophe, Dirprwy Lywydd, that will not abate while the billionaires get richer either. If we ignore that, it will not go away. Now is the time to bring energy companies into public hands, to invest in green energy, to insulate our homes, to save our planet, fortify our future. Now is the time for radical thinking, bringing down public transport costs, waiving council tax arrears, freezing rents, helping people to stay alive. Because crises are all-consuming, like flames, and if we don't put them out and quickly, the scars they'll leave will never heal.