Johnson says world must face climate change
Tells other leaders that humans must ‘grow up’
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told world leaders at the United Nations on Wednesday night that humanity has to “grow up” and tackle climate change, saying humans must stop trashing the planet like a teenager on a bender.
Johnson is due to host a major United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland in six weeks’ time. He is using a trip to the U.N. General Assembly in New York to press governments for tougher emissions-cutting targets and more money to help poor countries clean up their economies.
In a speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday, he said it’s now or never if the world is to meet its goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
“If we keep on the current track then the temperatures will go up by 2.7 degrees or more by the end of the century. And never mind what that will do to the ice floes,” Johnson said. “We will see desertification, drought, crop failure, and mass movements of humanity on a scale not seen before. Not because of some unforeseen natural event or disaster, but because of us, because of what we are doing now.”
In his speech, Johnson compared humanity to an impetuous 16-year-old – “just old enough to get ourselves into serious trouble.”
“We have come to that fateful age when we know roughly how to drive and we know how to unlock the drinks cabinet and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal,” he said.
“We believe that someone else will clear up the mess we make, because that is what someone else has always done,” he added. “We trash our habitats again and again with the inductive reasoning that we have got away with it so far, and therefore we will get away with it again.