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Tuesday, February 18, 2025

UK’s Johnson warns of ‘doomsday’ as climate summit begins

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1204 days ago
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, right, greet U.S. President Joe Biden , at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Monday, Nov. 1, 2021. The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow gathers leaders from around the world, in Scotland's biggest city, to lay out their vision for addressing the common challenge of global warming. (Christopher Furlong/Pool via AP)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, right, greet U.S. President Joe Biden , at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Monday, Nov. 1, 2021. The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow gathers leaders from around the world, in Scotland's biggest city, to lay out their vision for addressing the common challenge of global warming. (Christopher Furlong/Pool via AP)

GLAS­GOW, Scot­land (AP) — British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son opened a glob­al cli­mate sum­mit Mon­day, say­ing the world is strapped to a “dooms­day de­vice.”

John­son likened an ever-warm­ing Earth’s po­si­tion to that of fic­tion­al se­cret agent James Bond — strapped to a bomb that will de­stroy the plan­et and try­ing to work out how to defuse it.

He told lead­ers that “we are in rough­ly the same po­si­tion” — on­ly now the “tick­ing dooms­day de­vice” is not fic­tion. The threat is cli­mate change, trig­gered by the burn­ing of coal, oil and nat­ur­al gas, and he point­ed out that it all start­ed in Glas­gow with James Watt’s steam en­gine pow­ered by coal.

He was kick­ing off the world lead­ers’ sum­mit por­tion of a U.N. cli­mate con­fer­ence, which is aimed at get­ting agree­ment to curb car­bon emis­sions fast enough to keep glob­al warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius (2.7 de­grees Fahren­heit) be­low pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els. The world has al­ready warmed 1.1 de­grees Cel­sius (2 de­grees Fahren­heit). Cur­rent pro­jec­tions based on planned emis­sions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7C (4.9F) by the year 2100.

John­son told the sum­mit that hu­man­i­ty had run down the clock when it comes to cli­mate change, and the time for ac­tion is now. He point­ed out that the more than 130 world lead­ers who gath­ered had an av­er­age age of over 60, while the gen­er­a­tions most harmed by cli­mate change aren’t yet born.

John­son called for the end of coal-fired pow­er plants and gaso­line-pow­ered cars along with a huge in­flux of cash from rich na­tions to poor to help them switch to green­er economies and adapt to the wors­en­ing cli­mate im­pacts.

Britain’s leader struck a gloomy note on the eve of the con­fer­ence, af­ter lead­ers from the Group of 20 ma­jor economies made on­ly mod­est cli­mate com­mit­ments at their sum­mit in Rome this week­end.

And that mood got on­ly dark­er when Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res fol­lowed him.

“We are dig­ging our own graves,” Guter­res said. “Our plan­et is chang­ing be­fore our eyes — from the ocean depths to moun­tain­tops, from melt­ing glac­i­ers to re­lent­less ex­treme weath­er events.”

Britain’s Prince Charles told the world lead­ers they need to “save our pre­cious plan­et” and that “the eyes and hopes of the world are up­on you.”

Af­ter John­son, Guter­res, Prince Charles and an im­pas­sioned 95-year-old Sir David At­ten­bor­ough, scores of oth­er lead­ers will traipse to the podi­um Mon­day and Tues­day at cru­cial in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate talks in Scot­land and talk about what their coun­try is go­ing to do about the threat of glob­al warm­ing. From U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden to Sey­chelles Pres­i­dent Wav­el John Charles Ramkalawan, they are ex­pect­ed to say how their na­tion will do its ut­most, chal­lenge col­leagues to do more and gen­er­al­ly turn up the rhetoric.

The biggest names, in­clud­ing In­dia’s Naren­dra Mo­di, France’s Em­manuel Macron and Ibrahim Solih, pres­i­dent of hard hit Mal­dives, will take the stage Mon­day.

And then the lead­ers will leave.

The idea is that they will do the big po­lit­i­cal give-and-take, set­ting out broad out­lines of agree­ment, and then have oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials ham­mer out the nag­ging but cru­cial de­tails. That’s what worked to make the his­toric 2015 Paris cli­mate deal a suc­cess, for­mer U.N. Cli­mate Sec­re­tary Chris­tiana Figueres told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

“For heads of state, it is ac­tu­al­ly a much bet­ter use of their strate­gic think­ing,” Figueres said.

In Paris, the two sig­na­ture goals — the 1.5-de­gree Cel­sius lim­it and net ze­ro car­bon emis­sions by 2050 — were cre­at­ed by this lead­ers-first process, Figueres said. In the un­suc­cess­ful 2009 Copen­hagen meet­ing the lead­ers swooped in at the end.

Thou­sands lined up in a chilly wind in the Scot­tish city of Glas­gow on Mon­day to get through a bot­tle­neck at the en­trance to the venue. But what will be no­tice­able are a hand­ful of ma­jor ab­sences at the sum­mit known as COP26.

Xi Jin­ping, pres­i­dent of top car­bon-pol­lut­ing na­tion Chi­na, won’t be in Glas­gow. Figueres said his ab­sence isn’t that big a deal be­cause he isn’t leav­ing the coun­try dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and his cli­mate en­voy is a vet­er­an ne­go­tia­tor.

Biden, how­ev­er, has chid­ed Chi­na and Rus­sia for their less than am­bi­tious ef­forts to curb emis­sions and blamed them for a dis­ap­point­ing G-20 state­ment on cli­mate change.

Per­haps more trou­ble­some for the U.N. sum­mit is the ab­sence of sev­er­al small na­tions from the Pa­cif­ic is­lands that couldn’t make it be­cause of COVID-19 re­stric­tions and lo­gis­tics. That’s a big prob­lem be­cause their voic­es re­lay ur­gency, Figueres said.

In ad­di­tion, the heads of sev­er­al ma­jor emerg­ing economies be­yond Chi­na are al­so skip­ping the sum­mit, in­clud­ing those from Rus­sia, Turkey, Mex­i­co, Brazil and South Africa. That leaves In­dia’s Mo­di the on­ly leader present from the so-called BRICS na­tions, which ac­count for more than 40% of glob­al emis­sions.

Kevin Con­rad, a ne­go­tia­tor from Papua New Guinea who al­so chairs the Coali­tion for Rain­for­est Na­tions, said he’s watch­ing the big car­bon-pol­lut­ing na­tions. “I think it’s re­al­ly im­por­tant for the Unit­ed States and Chi­na to show lead­er­ship as the two largest emit­ters. If both of them can show it can be done, I think they give hope to the rest of the world,” he said.

The amount of en­er­gy un­leashed by such warm­ing would melt much of the plan­et’s ice, raise glob­al sea lev­els and great­ly in­crease the like­li­hood and in­ten­si­ty of ex­treme weath­er, ex­perts say.

But be­fore the U.N. cli­mate sum­mit, the G-20 lead­ers, at the close of their meet­ing, of­fered vague cli­mate pledges in­stead of com­mit­ments of firm ac­tion, say­ing they would seek car­bon neu­tral­i­ty “by or around mid-cen­tu­ry.” The coun­tries al­so agreed to end pub­lic fi­nanc­ing for coal-fired pow­er gen­er­a­tion abroad, but set no tar­get for phas­ing out coal do­mes­ti­cal­ly — a clear nod to Chi­na and In­dia.

The G-20 coun­tries rep­re­sent more than three-quar­ters of the world’s cli­mate-dam­ag­ing emis­sions and sum­mit host Italy, and Britain, which is host­ing the Glas­gow con­fer­ence, had been hop­ing for more am­bi­tious tar­gets com­ing out of Rome.

In­dia, the world’s third-biggest emit­ter, has yet to fol­low Chi­na, the U.S. and the Eu­ro­pean Union in set­ting a tar­get for reach­ing “net ze­ro” emis­sions. Ne­go­tia­tors are hop­ing Mo­di will an­nounce such a goal in Glas­gow.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has tried hard to tem­per ex­pec­ta­tions that two weeks of cli­mate talks will pro­duce ma­jor break­throughs on cut­ting cli­mate-dam­ag­ing emis­sions.

Rather than a quick fix, “Glas­gow is the be­gin­ning of this decade race, if you will,” Biden’s cli­mate en­voy, John Ker­ry, told re­porters Sun­day.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Frank Jor­dans and Ellen Knick­mey­er con­tributed to this re­port.

 

European UnionEnvironmentUnited StatesUnited Nations


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