UK meet sets up climate summit

CARBIS BAY, UK: Britain is using its G7 summit to mobilise allies ahead of the COP26 conference in November in Glasgow amid pressure from environmental groups to make the meeting count.

On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson restated his aim of a “green industrial revolution” to meet environmental challenges and create jobs after the global health crisis. Both the optics of the summit as well as its politics are important for Britain, which will host the UN climate conference in November.

“The UK has a serious moral responsibility to lead the way on climate and nature both as a big historical emitter of carbon but also as the host of those big conferences,” Greenpeace UK’S head of politics Rebecca Newsom told AFP. “We need to see proper action, otherwise our world leaders are failing us.”

Greenpeace released a striking video for the occasion, deploying 300 drones to form animal shapes in the sky and urge action on biodiversity as well as the climate.

The summit also played host to a series of demonstrations with protesters vying for attention. Oxfam activists wore masks showing the faces of the summit’s leaders while others, urging Japan to stop burning coal, dressed as giant Pokemon character Pikachu.

Overwhelmingly, strict security measures kept the demonstrators away from the leaders’ meetings in the seaside resort of Carbis Bay. Only Extinction Rebellion protesters briefly breached one police cordon.

“We’re hopeful that US President Biden has changed the dynamic on climate change and that we will see the ambitious targets that we need from the G7,” said Oxfam campaigner Max Lawson.

Johnson is pushing for G7 countries to halve their emissions by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The commitment was one of the major advances made by the US at a climate conference in April.

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