48 hours to save the world
PM in last-ditch plea to win a deal at climate talks
PRIME Minister Boris Johnson made a desperate appeal to world leaders yesterday as the Cop26 climate conference enters its last two days.
Addressing a press conference in Glasgow, the PM sounded a cautious note about a successful outcome for the conference and frustration that not all nations were doing all they could to get an agreement.
Without naming nations, he hit out at countries that he said had “spent six years conspicuously patting themselves on the back” after the Paris climate agreement.
He said: “That 2015 agreement in Paris was a significant moment in the fight against climate change, but it was ultimately a pledge of action still to come.
“And it’s very frustrating to see countries that have spent six years conspicuously patting themselves on the back for signing that promissory note in Paris quietly edging towards default now that vulnerable nations and future generations are demanding payment here now in Glasgow.”
He appealed to other world leaders to grasp the opportunity, saying that “the world is closer than it has ever been to signalling the beginning of the end of anthropogenic climate change”.
He went on: “It is now within reach. At Cop26 in these final days we just need to reach out together and grasp it. So my question to my fellow world leaders as we enter the last hours of Cop26 is: will you help us do that? Will you help us grasp the opportunity or will you stand in the way?”
He admitted the climate crisis could not be
“fixed” at the summit. But he went on: “What we can possibly do if things go well in the remaining 48 hours,
52 hours... is the possibility that we will come away from this with the first genuine road map for a solution to anthropogenic climate change that I can think of in my lifetime.”
PRIME Minister Boris Johnson has issued a rallying cry to world leaders to “reach out and grasp” the opportunity in front of them as the Cop26 conference moved into its crucial final days of negotiations over the fight against climate change.
Mr Johnson conceded that Cop26 “is not going to fix” climate change in one go. But the Prime Minister told a press conference: “What we can possibly do, if things go well in the remaining 48 hours, 52 hours, whatever we’ve got - and I don’t see why we shouldn’t go into extra time if we have to, but you know I don’t want to - is the possibility that we will come away from this with the first genuine roadmap for a solution to anthropogenic climate change that I can think of in my lifetime.”
The Prime Minister said: “Here in Glasgow the world is closer than it has ever been to signalling the beginning of the end of anthropogenic climate change.
“It is now within reach.
“At Cop26 in these final days we just need to reach out together and grasp it. So my question to my fellow world leaders as we enter the last hours of Cop26 is: will you help us do that? Will you help us grasp the opportunity or will you stand in the way?
He said that finance was the key”solvent”. “If we can unlock this, if we can make progress, it will depend on the finance and that fundamental compact between the developing world, the climate-vulnerable world, and we in the developed world, who are overwhelmingly responsible historically for emissions, and who continue to be responsible for so, so much of the emissions around the world.”
Earlier Cop26 President Alok Sharma has told people on the frontline of climate change that “we are fighting tooth and nail to make sure we have an ambitious outcome” to the talks. He was speaking as a first draft of a deal for Cop26 calls on countries to strengthen their emissions-cutting plans in the next year in a bid to keep a goal to limit warming to 1.5C within reach.
It also calls for faster phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels - a first for a UN deal - but there is likely to be strong resistance from some countries and it could be taken out of any final agreement.
Developing countries and campaigners have also raised concerns over the provision of finance for poorer nations to cope with the impact of climate change in the draft deal. The draft “cover decision”, the final version of which must be agreed by a consensus of nearly 200 countries at the Glasgow summit, was published on Wednesday.
Scientists have warned that keeping temperature rises to 1.5C, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change which would be felt with greater warming, requires global emissions to be cut by 45% by 2030, and to zero overall by mid-century - but countries’ plans for this decade leave the world well off track.
The draft is published after analysis warned existing plans for this decade put the world on track for 2.4C of warming – well above the goals internationally agreed in the Paris accord to curb temperature rises to “well below” 2C and try to limit them to 1.5C.
It urges countries to “revisit and strengthen” the targets for cutting emissions by 2030 in their national plans to align them with the Paris temperature goal, which still covers both numbers, by the end of 2022. The document published yesterday also urges countries to set out long-term strategies by the end of next year to reach net-zero emissions by about mid-century.
It includes a call for developed countries to at least double their collective provision of climate finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change.