Obama to bring drama to climate crisis summit
Ex-president to join event amid fears of China snub
Barack Obama is to attend the cop26 climate summit in Glasgow amid fears it could be a flop with china’s president staying away.
Boris Johnson has reportedly been warned that Xi Jinping will not be at the critical conference, which starts at the end of this month.
But the former US president is planning to attend, the Prime Minister’s office confirmed yesterday.
Mr Obama will meet young activists and speak about the threat posed by climate change during his time in Scotland, his office said in a statement.
The former president will also highlight the leadership of youngsters around the globe, and call for more action by governments, the private sector and charities.
His attendance is said to be part of a strategy by the White House to dominate the meeting and show the US’s commitment to battling global warming.
President Xi’s apparent decision not to
‘Xi hasn’t travelled anywhere in years’
attend could mean china refuses to offer new climate change targets.
The success of the summit will depend on whether major polluters such as china, the US, India and russia sign up to tougher goals.
all countries are expected to publish new targets, known as nationally defined contributions, beforehand.
But with just two weeks until the summit, only half of the G20 countries have put forward their plans. china and Saudi arabia are said to be among those who have missed the deadline.
If china fails to publish its own NDc, or sets one that fails to further reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, it could wreck the aim of limiting global warming to a rise of 1.5c. china is responsible for 27 per cent of global carbon emissions.
President Xi attended the Paris climate summit in 2015, which agreed to limit global warming to considerably less than two degrees above pre-industrial levels.
a Government source said there was increasing pessimism about how far china was prepared to move.
‘It is now pretty clear that Xi is not going to turn up and the PM has been told that,’ the insider told The Times. ‘What we don’t know is what stance the chinese are going to take. They could go to the G20 [summit in rome on October 30 to 31] with new commitments but that is now looking less likely.
‘The truth is that unless china comes with new commitments we’re not going to be able to keep 1.5 degrees alive.’
a Whitehall official said President Xi’s absence did not mean china would not make ambitious proposals.
‘Xi hasn’t travelled anywhere for years. He didn’t go to the UN general assembly last month and he isn’t going to the G20,’ they said.
at the UN last year President Xi committed china to reach net zero emissions by 2060 and for emissions to peak by 2030 – but this has not been made into an NDc. Transport Secretary Grant
Shapps said that china and other major polluters had a ‘moral duty’ to step up the battle against global warming.
He warned that countries which snub the summit in Glasgow would be seen as ‘outliers’, with the ‘world watching’ what action political leaders take to stop floods, fires and other climate change disasters.