‘Johnson doesn’t get it‘

o UK PM criticised over climate change issues

UNITED KINGDOM: The former Tory minister and president of the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow – sacked last week by the government – has launched a blistering attack on Boris Johnson’s record on climate change.

Claire Perry O’Neill claimed Mr Johnson “doesn’t really get” the climate emergency and said his promises “are not close to being met”. XR protesters said the PM had proved himself a slippery fish on the issue, as he outlined his plan for the summit alongside Sir David Attenborough.

It comes as the government faces criticism over a “concerning” plan to jail terror offenders indefinitely, while lawyers warned emergency legislation to prevent automatic release was a “panic” measure sure to be challenged in court.

Boris Johnson told at a reception at the Science Museum: “We’ve put so much CO2 in the atmosphere collectively that the entire planet is swaddled in a tea cosy of the stuff.

“It’s now predicted, unless we take urgent action, to get 3C hotter, and in the hurricanes and the bushfires and melting of the ice caps and the acidification of the oceans, the evidence is now overwhelming.

“The phenomenon of global warming is taking its toll on the most vulnerable populations around the planet,” he said, adding the UK had committed to £11.6 billion (RM62 billion) to tackling climate change around the world. “We know as a country, as a society, as a planet, as a species, we must now act.” Johnson also said that efforts to tackle nature should be linked to climate change.

The prime minister did not take questions after his address and was spirited away by security staff.

In answer to a shouted question asking how he would ensure COP26 would not be a “disaster” like previous conferences, he said: “It’s going to be great.” Asked why he had sacked Claire O’Neill as head of COP26, the prime minister did not respond.