As Conference of Parties, COP26, opens in Glasgow, Scotland, Monday, the message is not good for the earth — and humans.
For United Nations, UN, Secretary General António Guterres, one of the loudest advocates for urgent action on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, “our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink.
“Either we stop it or it stops us. And it’s time to say, enough. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon.
“Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves.”
PM cites James Bond, says the clock has run down
Boris Johnson begins by welcoming everybody to COP and Glasgow.
He makes the comparison between world leaders and James Bond, saying that the spy often ends his films fighting to stop a force from ending the world.
“The tragedy is that this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real,” he says.
He says that two degrees more to global temperatures will jeopardise food supplies, three degrees more will bring more wildfires and cyclones, while four degrees and ‘we say goodbye to whole cities’.
“The longer we fail to act the worse it gets and the higher the price when we are eventually forced by catastrophe to act,” he says.
“Humanity has long since rundown the clock on climate change, it is one minute to midnight on that clock and we need to act now.
“Humanity has long since rundown the clock on climate change, it is one minute to midnight on that clock and we need to act now.”
Boris Johnson added that “we have the technology and can find the finance” but says that the question today is ‘whether we have the will’.
‘Our children will judge us’
He says that while politicians talk about what they are going to do in 2050 or 2060 the average age of COP delegates is over 60 and he says the children who will judge us are not yet born.
“We mustn’t fluff our lines or miss our cue because if we fail they will not forgive us, they will know that Glasgow was the historic turning point when history failed to turn,” he says.
“They will judge us with bitterness and a resentment that eclipses any of the climate activists of today and they will be right. COP26 cannot be the end of the story on climate change.”(BBC)
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