It’s happened. A slim majority of people voted for the UK to come out of the EU. Half the country is grieving, the other half is celebrating. But now we urgently need to come together to shape our future -- because everything is about to change very fast.

Brexit has a whole host of consequences. One of them is that decades of environmental laws could be scrapped. EU legislation has helped us to fight climate change, control pollution, restrict fracking, protect endangered species, regulate GM crops and impose safeguards on the use of dangerous chemicals.

All of that could now be destroyed in a bonfire of regulations.

Within the next few months, we will have a new prime minister who will shape the country’s future environmental laws. They will be lobbied hard by corporations to cut “red tape” that restricts their planet-destroying ways. Let’s preempt them. Let’s mount a massive movement asking all the likely PM hopefuls to pledge to stand on the side of people and planet.

Ask Theresa May, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Stephen Crabb and Liam Fox to pledge to make our environmental protection stronger, not weaker.

The Brexit vote has enormous implications for a whole host of things we care about -- for our economy, for workers’ rights, for tax dodging, and for people who have immigrated to the UK and people of colour, some of whom are now living in fear. As a community, we’re going to need to step up over and over again to fight for a progressive future for our country that puts people and planet before profit.

Today, we’re asking you to join us in fighting for the planet.

More than 70 per cent of environmental safeguarding legislation comes from the EU. And there’s a very real danger that David Cameron’s successor could take us back to the days of being ‘the dirty man of Europe’ by scrapping that legislation.

But right now, those candidates are worried about how popular they are with the public, and whether their party thinks they can win a general election. That gives us a huge opportunity. If we can get them to publicly pledge now that they will work to protect the environment in future, we can hold them to that pledge when they take power.

Will you ask the most likely PMs in waiting to pledge to make our environmental protection stronger, not weaker?