Full coverage from Claudia Moray GBM’s Specialist in Legal Environmental Law at COP26 in Glasgow
“If we fail the world will not forgive us”
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson reflected before the leaders of 120 countries who arrived in the United Kingdom for the climate summit, 51 of them in private jets; That’s why the Farnborough airport in Hampshire was attacked by Extinction Rebellion activists, calling for an end to polluting flights chartered by “world leaders.”
Boris Johnson opened the conference and told delegates that if the world does not “take climate change seriously today, it will be too late for our children to do so tomorrow.”
Renowned natural history broadcaster Sir David Attenborough told leaders that “the world is watching them” in a moving speech, where he summarized the documentary “The Limits of the Planet.”
US President Biden claimed at the conference that “none of us will escape” if “we don’t seize the moment.”
Activist Greta Thunberg this year was not invited to speak, but she did so from outside, she told young protesters that politicians were “pretending to take our future seriously”. But representing the youth was Samoan climate activist Brianna Fruean who told world leaders “we are not drowning, we are fighting.”
President Xi of China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, chose not to attend COP26 and instead sent a written statement without a new announcement.
In another blow to the conference, India pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. That’s about 10 years after China and 20 years after the target set by the summit.
Elsewhere, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, apologized after making a comparison between the inability to address climate change and the inability to address the actions of Nazi Germany.
