The most pressing issue of our time is climate change, and the latest in a series of reports from the IPCC is explicit, yet should not be taken in isolation.
Look at the latest WWF report which indicates in no uncertain terms that we have lost more than 50% of our wildlife. Look at the State of Nature report of 2013 telling us that in the UK alone 77% of our most vulnerable species are in terminal decline.
In Brazil, 22 million people in Sao Paulo are expected to run out of water imminently, and you can't tell me that reducing CO2 by 40% in 2040 is going to help them. We have to join the dots. Sea level rise, ocean acidification, deforestation, drought and flood are the symptoms and they are not being taken seriously. Labour, Conservative and LibDem, whose policies are locked in the outdated groove of economic growth and a profit model which suits only the richest, are incapable of finding the solution. Their hands are tied fast by lobby groups and the old polluting industries which fund them.
Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC said "We have the means to limit climate change. The solutions are many and allow for continued economic and human development. All we need is the will to change."
Joined up thinking is the solution. Climate change will not be tamed whilst the world is in the grip of capitalism gone mad. The profit motive has become greater than the need to save ourselves. Not all growth is good and we must stop believing it is. The richest 1% are siphoning money out of the poorest, forcing them to work for a pittance and rubbing their hands with glee as the taxpayer makes up the difference in welfare. It's not sustainable.
The laws of social injustice must be broken. Short term vote grabbing polices are no fix to anything. They are seldom thought through, rarely fix anything and rely on little more than good PR for credibility.
If you really want to see what joined up policies would look like, look at the Greens. Climate change, economic and social justice intertwine every single policy. You simple cannot expect climate change to be the top priority for people struggling to exist in the constant battle of fuel poverty, welfare claims and long working hours. You simply can't expect people to change from fossil fuelled cars to electric ones when the electric cars are priced out of their range, and you shouldn't expect people to pay for solar panels when at the same time they are paying more than twice the market prices for subsidised nuclear energy. Taxes are spent on propping up bad employers, polluting industries and wars which make us less safe.
We've been fighting the wrong wars. Those billions spent on Afganisthan, Syria and Iraq would have been better spent fighting diseases like Ebola and poverty in our own land. We could have been spending money on an energy infrastructure packed with renewables which would guarantee our fuel security, or building carbon negative houses for the nation, making the NHS fit for the future and demolishing the unforgivable injustice of child poverty.
Joined up thinking requires joined up policies, and there is only one party which has the health of the people and the planet at its heart - The Green Party.
People old, young, and all points in between have noticed that there is an alternative to the one peddled by the media barons, and they want to know more about it. From Peace and Defence, to rebuilding the NHS and halting climate change in its tracks there is an alternative, and it's Green.