A whole new fossil fuel industry will launch in the UK on Saturday when energy giant Cuadrilla starts fracking for shale gas. This follows the defeat of Lancashire resident Bob Dennett’s attempt to block fracking in his local area with a court injunction – and comes just six days after a landmark report from the UN’s IPCC warning that we have just 12 years to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown.

I can’t deny the fracking decision is a devastating blow for everyone in the UK who cares about our future and our democracy.

Monday’s IPCC report was unequivocal: renewables need to supply 70-80% of our energy by 2050 to avoid disaster, and by 2030 we must be well on the way to meeting that target.

The government should be urgently repealing restrictions that have effectively banned the cheapest clean energy – onshore wind – and reinstating support for solar. They should be dramatically reducing our reliance on coal, oil and gas, too. We simply don’t have time to be distracted by building a whole new fossil fuel industry – in economic terms or in terms of our carbon budgets.

But there is still hope. The fight against fracking has united people like no other British movement against environmental destruction in recent years. And we’ve had significant success.

The government has been doing everything in its power to force this new industry through for five years. But it’s been seven years since any part of the UK was last fracked.

Around the clock for half a decade, local communities are all that have stood in the way of ministers seemingly hell-bent on tearing up our climate targets and fossil fuel corporations determined to prise every penny of profit from our warming planet. Thousands of people have bravely put themselves at risk to prevent, delay and obstruct the frackers.

‘When a judge sent three peaceful anti-fracking protesters to prison last month, people from all walks of life sent messages of solidarity.’ Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Thanks to them, in Yorkshire, Third Energy has given up its plans to frack after failing to pull together the financial backing to win planning permission. In Lancashire, local councillors refused to allow Cuadrilla to frack at Preston New Road – but the government stepped in and trampled all over local democracy.

Ministers are getting themselves into deep political trouble as they ramp up efforts to further overrule local communities – with increasing numbers of their own MPs now threatening to vote down plans to make fracking as easy as building a garden shed.

And when a judge sent three peaceful anti-fracking protesters to prison last month, people from all walks of life condemned their harsh sentences and sent messages of solidarity.

At a time when our country can feel very divided, the movement to protect our environment is uniting people. Drilling may start in Lancashire, but now is not the time to give in. Fracking is at the front line of the struggle to totally transform the future. A new mass movement for climate justice can shut Preston New Road down – and make sure it is the last ever fracking site in this country.

It can block airport expansion, too, and together we can stop HS2.

With bold, positive campaigns we can unite communities around calls for clean, safe streets that prioritise people over cars. We can win a public transport system fit for the 21st century, and investment that creates hundreds of thousands of green jobs.

The IPCC made clear that nothing short of totally reimagining our economy will deliver a safe climate. The frackers might have won this round – but if we use the moment to unite behind the common and inextricably linked causes of social and environmental justice, we can still prevail.

• Caroline Lucas is Green MP for Brighton Pavilion