British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday, October 31, called on world leaders gathered at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26, COP26) in Glasgow to commit to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Otherwise, efforts to stop ongoing global warming will be in vain, he warned, AFP reported.
"If the Glasgow meeting fails, then it will be a total failure," Johnson said. The British head of government spoke at a news conference after the G20 (G20) leaders met in Rome, where an agreement was reached to limit global warming to within one and a half degrees Celsius.
Opening the two-week summit in Scotland's largest city on Sunday, COP26 chief Alok Sharma said the talks were the "last and foremost hope" that the goal could be met.
Johnson holds the same view, even despite the 2015 adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, which cemented the goal of not allowing the average temperature on the planet to rise above two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the 21st century.
"If we don't act now, the Paris Agreement will be seen in the future not as a moment when humanity opened its eyes to the problem, but as a moment when it flinched and turned away from it," Johnson told reporters.
He welcomed the steps being taken in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States to combat air pollution. But he said that this, like the G20's commitment to reduce reliance on coal in the coming years, are only "drops in a rapidly warming ocean."
In the run-up to the summit, more and more countries submitted plans to reduce CO2 emissions, but according to Johnson, this is still not enough. Without further action, the Paris Agreement will be "just a piece of paper," the British head of government stressed. Johnson demanded that the participants of the meeting make "real progress.
We shall remind you that in the evening of 31 October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, together with his wife Olena, arrived in the UK to attend the UN Climate Change Conference COP26.
