In a field by my parents’ house in Norfolk, my dad has planted 600 trees. Those trees will one day grow into a wood that my children will play in as they grow up. By planting those trees, my dad is being a good grandfather, even before his grandchildren are born, and I can’t help thinking a similar principle should apply around climate change.

While the impacts of a warming planet will be huge in our lifetime, they’ll affect our children even more. I don’t believe it’ll be enough to teach my children well and to earn enough money to put food on the table if climate change brings chaos to the world they grow up in. I don’t think we can build walls high enough to protect our children from the world outside so if we want to protect them, we have to protect that world.

It has been said that the next generation will be the first in human history whose standard of living is actually worse than the generation which came before them. Doesn’t look like we’re doing a very good job for our children so far, does it?

But I still think this link between what we do now and the world our children inherit offers an opportunity for everyone who is concerned about climate change. I think there’s only one thing which people love more than themselves – and that’s their children. If we can make the fight against climate change a matter of duty to our children, we can carry far more people with us than we do right now.

That’s why I’ve been trying to get people in their 20s and 30s to take more action on climate change, both taking small steps in their own lives and asking the Government to do more as well. Persuading people to take these steps is often an uphill struggle but I’m driven on by the knowledge that one day, if we don’t do something, my children will ask me why I didn’t do more to protect their futures when I had the chance.