The General Election came to the small village of Otford last night, with an election hustings organised by the Sevenoaks branch of Extinction Rebellion.

All six candidates contesting Sevenoaks in the December 12 election were invited, and four of them turned up: (from left below) Gareth Willis from the Lib Dems, Seamus McCauley from Labour, Paul Wharton from the Green Party and Sean Finch from the Libertarian Party.

Missing from the top table were the Independent candidate Paulette Furse, and the Conservative candidate Laura Trott, who has inherited a 21,917 majority from the town's previous Conservative MP, Sir Michael Fallon.

Sevenoaks is the 18th "safest" Conservative seat in the country.

That didn't stop villagers cramming Otford Memorial Hall, which had standing room only.

Alison Walsingham from Extinction Rebellion chaired the good-humoured debate which was specifically on the issues of climate change and nature, with Amanda Carpenter, the CEO of consultancy firm Achill Management, providing a "fact-checking" service on the candidates' statements.

With a clearly partisan audience of voters concerned about global warming, the Labour, Lib Dem and Green party candidates were all keen to emphasise both their own personal commitment to environmental issues and their respective parties' policies to tackle the problem.

Only Mr Finch touted a different view, bravely telling the audience that he was "sceptical" that climate change really existed, suggesting there had been much warmer periods in the earth's history.

Mr Willis, a geography teacher at Sevenoaks School, who had some of his pupils in the audience, praised the younger generation for bringing climate change to the centre of the national debate saying: "The young generation are perhaps the best informed (generation) there has ever been."

Mr Wharton said it had been his worry over climate change that led him to join the Green party three years ago.

Warning that climate change was "potentially going to wipe us out", he promised the Greens would spend £100b a year on reducing carbon emissions. He said: "It sounds like a lot of money, but compared with the cost of not doing it, it's a bargain."

Mr Willis agreed: "We only have one shot at this." He suggested the Lib Dems' plans for improving public transport, supporting the greater use of electric cars and providing better broadband would help, but key was to stay in the EU.

Only Mr Finch disagreed. He said that Extinction Rebellion and what he described as the "green movement" had started with good intentions but had been taken over by those with a more extreme sub-plot such as wealth redistribution. He described them as "watermelons - green on the outside but red on the inside."

He spoke against the greater use of wind and solar power, saying nuclear energy was the cleanest and most efficient energy source.

Mr Wharton said that though everybody should do their bit to save the planet, the real solution lay with Government. He said: "Government can do in a day what it would take us several lifetimes individually to achieve."

Mr McCauley said the Labour party had very practical plans to help. They included providing interest-free loans for people to swap their petrol cars for electric, the retrospective insulation of the existing housing stock and the restoration of the 3,000 bus routes that had been lost over the past 10 years.

Mr Willis said Government intervention was necessary because: "The free market has many merits, but the environment is never properly priced into the equation."

The Labour , Lib Dem and Green candidates all agreed that the international cooperation of staying in the EU was essential to counter climate change, with Mr McCauley going against his own party's policy, which is first to re-negotiate "a better Brexit deal" and then to hold a referendum, with a promise that he personally would campaign for Remain.

Mr Finch dismissed all the Brexit fears: "We'll be fine," he told the audience.

For more Kent 2019 General Election coverage click here.