HUMANITY’S 5-1 DOWN AT HALF TIME AND FACING COLLAPSE LIKE THE ROMANS
BORIS Johnson last night compared the global fight against climate change to being 5-1 down at half-time in a football match as he urged China and India to do more to avert the collapse of humanity.
Ahead of today’s G20 meeting in Rome, the Prime Minister warned that the world was on the verge of a great disaster like the fall of the Roman Empire.
He said he had urged China to do more to reduce its reliance on coal, and said further action was needed by India.
But he also admitted that the world would not be able to stop global warming at these meetings – and would only be able just to slow its increase.
His warnings came just as the world prepared to gather at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow where leaders will try to reverse global warming.
As he was joined by his wife Carrie aboard a plane to Rome ahead of the meeting, the Prime Minister declared: ‘I would say that humanity as a whole is about 5-1 down at half-time. We’ve got a long way to go, but we can do it. We have the ability to come back but it’s going to take a huge amount of effort.’ He added: ‘Team World is up against a very formidable opponent in climate change.’
Speaking about Rome’s ancient monu
‘Could see world go backwards’
ments, Mr Johnson argued that they could be seen as ‘a memento mori to us’ about how fast civilisations can decline, ‘Humanity, civilisation, society, can go backwards as well as forwards, and when things start to go wrong they can go wrong at extraordinary speed,’ he said.
‘You saw that with the decline and fall of the Roman empire, and I’m afraid to say that it’s true today that unless we get this right in tackling climate change, we could see our civilisation, our world, also go backwards.’
He said he had urged China’s President Xi Jinping to do more and bring the date it expected its emissions to peak forward from 2030 to 2025 – but added that they had not agreed to this.
He said: ‘I had a long talk with President Xi today and I reiterated my thanks to him for what he said about overseas coal, which is good. And I made a couple of other points.
‘First of all the moment for peaking, and whether they’re going to get to that. He said 2030. I pushed a bit on that 2025 would be better than 2030. I wouldn’t say he committed.
‘But the other point where I was evangelical was the potential to move away from coal. He said China depends on it for our domestic economy.’
Mr Johnson added that the UK’s movement on coal showed how fast you can make the transition. Asked about his message to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, Mr Johnson said he needed to do more on the country’s pledge to tackle emissions.
‘I look forward very much to seeing Narandra Modi here in Rome and at Cop.
‘India has done brilliantly on renewables – his solar alliance is fantastic – but we need to see more from the NDC [Nationally Determined Contributions].’ Mr Johnson added: ‘We are not going to stop global warming in Rome or in this meeting in Cop.
‘The most we can hope to do is slow the increase. What we need to do is to take steps now that give us the ability in future to come back and make further commitments.’ On America, he added: ‘America has got a massive role to play as well. Joe Biden totally buys into this agenda and I thought that what they did at UNGA (UN General Assembly) was very promising.
‘We won’t get anywhere unless the developing world feels that the West is making the commitments in cash that they need to see. That American commitment of £11 billion dollars was very important.’ Asked about his own contribution to climate change, and whether he was eating less meat to reduce his environmental footprint, Mr Johnson said: ‘I’m eating a bit less of everything, which may be an environmentally friendly thing to do.’ Speaking to the i newspaper, Mr Johnson said: ‘Cop is really the last opportunity for the planet, humanity, to come together and keep alive the hope of restricting growth in temperatures to 1.5 degrees.
‘We are not going to stop climate change any time soon, and we are certainly not going to stop it at Cop26. The most we can hope to do, and it is going to be incredibly difficult, is to restrict the growth by the end of the century to 1.5 degrees.’ It came as Chinese President Xi said he would address leaders at Cop26 by video link, after saying he would not attend the summit. The country is the world’s biggest user of fossil fuels and there was concern it would not make progress if he did not attend.
On Thursday, China formally submitted its climate goals, pledging to reach peak emissions of CO2 before 2030 and achieve ‘carbon neutrality’, or using forests and other measures to absorb as much carbon as it emits, by 2060.
The document included targets previously announced but no additional goals.