FOSSIL fuel giants are “picking our pockets and stealing our future,” Jeremy Corbyn has said ahead of a major online event highlighting the link between climate change and the cost-of-living crisis. 

Tomorrow’s “national emergency” meeting, hosted by direct action group Just Stop Oil, will see the former Labour leader join forces with television presenter and naturalist Chris Packham along with leading figures from the social, racial and environmental justice movements. 

Speakers will push for mass civil resistance against the fossil fuel industry, accusing it of contributing to climate breakdown while also pushing up prices in the absence of government action. 

Mr Corbyn said ahead of the event this evening: “We have to take matters into our own hands. That’s what we’ve always done to win change. 

“Movements are the motor of change in history. When we come together, we can and will transform the world and we must, because those in power, the fossil fuel giants, the governments and the billionaires they own, are picking our pockets and stealing our future.” 

Mr Packham said: “Brace yourself for [the] truth about our rising energy prices, the climate crisis and big, fat profits. Look, they are robbing us and they are killing us.” 

Other speakers include racial justice campaigner and former London mayoral adviser Lee Jasper, feminist and human rights activist Chantelle Lunt, climate change expert  Professor Bill McGuire and Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman Zoe Cohen.

Just Stop Oil said the different movements are coming together because they share a concern for “ordinary people,” including households unable to pay their bills and those from marginalised backgrounds and women who “bear the brunt of the climate and cost-of-living crisis.”

Ms Cohen said: “We’ve just seen 40°C degrees in the UK for the first time in history and at the same time millions more people are being made poorer, hungrier and more desperate than ever, all caused by the same growth-obsessed, fossil-fuel-addicted, billionaire-benefiting system, enabled by our government. 

“This is the same government that is planning 40 new fossil fuel projects by 2025. We must come together and stop them. We have no choice.”

The meeting start at 7pm on Zoom. Sign up at mstar.link/StopOilEmergencyMeeting.