Opposition leaders call on Johnson to join in TV climate debate

Leaders from all the main opposition parties have written to Boris Johnson urging him to take part in a televised debate on the climate crisis before the election.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, Jo Swinson of the Liberal Democrats and the Green party’s Jonathan Bartley and Siân Berry argue that the public have a right to know what political leaders intend to do to avoid “the irreversible impacts of environmental breakdown”.

“The climate and nature emergencies threaten everything we hold dear; the jobs we do, the health service we rely on, the houses we live in and the food that we grow and eat,” they wrote in the letter sent to Johnson on Tuesday.

“The public are right to look to us, their politicians, for leadership. The ambition of our response must match the scale of the challenge.”

The Conservatives, whose environmental record was condemned by leading climate scientists and former government advisers earlier this week, have failed to respond to questions from the Guardian regarding a climate debate.

But a memo sent to the organisers of a public campaign for a climate debate said Johnson would not participate because he did not want environmental issues “siloed”.

The idea of a televised climate debate has gained widespread support since it was launched by school strikers, students and pensioners’ groups earlier this month.

More than 500 scientists – including Sir David King, a key government adviser on the climate crisis until 2017 – have backed the plan.

In a statement, the experts said: “As scientists, we confirm that the youth movement’s concerns are well-founded and rest on highly robust scientific evidence.

“Hence, we join their call for a political party leaders’ debate on climate and nature where candidates will outline and discuss their parties’ plans to tackle the climate and ecological crises.”

In the past two weeks, the campaign has received support from more than 70 organisations with a total membership of more than 10 million, including the Women’s Institute, the National Trust and the National Education Union. And more than 188,000 people have signed a petition supporting the campaign being run by climate charity Possible.

Related: How do the parties propose to tackle the climate crisis?

Max Wakefield, the director of Possible, said the poll in December must be the UK’s “first climate election”.

“It’s time for all parties to recognise this is the fight of our lives, and debate how to go about the urgent changes we must make to win it.”

The climate emergency has been forced up the political agenda in the past year as growing evidence of the crisis – from floods to wildfires, record temperatures to melting ice – has become impossible to ignore.

In the UK, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren have taken to the streets to demand action and Extinction Rebellion protests have brought large parts of London to a standstill.

Anna Taylor, the co-founder of UK Student Climate Network, which helped organise the school strikes, said: “Young people now want to hear leaders’ plans to return our futures to us, because that is precisely what is at stake.”