AS COP26 began this weekend, I joined groups and individuals rallying in East Linton and in North Berwick demanding action on the climate emergency.

Environmental activism is long-established in the county and this weekend’s demonstrations showed inter-generational commitment and strength of feeling.

In 2019, pupils from Haddington, Dunbar and North Berwick were among thousands participating in the ‘Student Strike against Climate Change’, and the council recognised our young people “as global citizens... expressing their views”. It was a privilege to see children from age five upwards at the weekend rallies and humbling to hear their articulate, well-informed views.

The next half-decade will measure the effectiveness of the deliberations in Glasgow: the planet needs the deeds, not just words, of Prime Ministers and Presidents. COP26’s outcomes will be closely scrutinised by climate activists, including tens of thousands converging on Glasgow, pressing for global action.

Protests might cause inconvenience, but 15 years ago Vice President Al Gore raised international awareness of global warming as “an inconvenient truth”.

COP26 campaigners focus on both climate change and climate justice, especially for the poor and disadvantaged who bear the brunt of high levels of fossil fuel consumption in richer countries.

COP26 coincides with legislation introduced last week in the Miners’ Pardon Bill which examines the qualifying criteria for pardoning miners convicted of offences during the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike.

Recognised as the “most bitter and divisive industrial dispute in living memory”, no one who watched its fierce confrontations nightly on TV or saw the devastating consequences for communities will ever forget it.

A wide public consultation launched in 2018 found respondents overwhelmingly in favour of pardoning miners, whose principled struggle to protect coal industry jobs, culture and communities was defeated by the Thatcher Government’s opposition to trades unions.

In the intervening decades, however, the world has come to recognise the environmental damage of fossil fuels. COP26 must deliver a definitive rejection of fossil fuels, including coal, in favour of renewables; ironically, at the same time, Scotland is re-visiting aspects of its own past relationship with coal, with the chance to put right a historic injustice towards miners.