Glasgow, Nov. 1 (BNA): World leaders heightened tensions and turned to Monday’s apocalyptic rhetoric in a bid to create new urgency to disrupt international climate negotiations.
The metaphors were interesting and mixed at the beginning of the talks, known as COP26. For British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, global warming was a “doomsday tool” tethered to humanity.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told his colleagues that people are “digging our own graves”. Speaking of weak island states, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley added to the moral thunder, warning leaders not to “allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.”
After the harrowing warnings of these three and a few others, a handful of quieter – and sometimes detailed – speeches followed. US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have avoided rhetorical escalation and entered into a precarious policy.
“There is no time left to sit down,” Biden said in a more subtle warning. “Every day we are late, the cost of inaction increases.”
In addition to persuading the major carbon polluters to pledge stricter emissions cuts, French President Emmanuel Macron said European countries must now shift from promises to action.
Earlier, Johnson – who hosts the summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow – likened the location of an ever-warmer Earth to that of fictional secret agent James Bond: strapped to and trying to defuse a bomb that will destroy the planet.
Johnson also noted that the more than 130 world leaders gathered for the Leaders Summit segment of the United Nations climate conference have an average age of over 60, while the generations most affected by climate change are not yet born.
The conference aims to get governments to commit to cutting carbon emissions fast enough to keep global warming at 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels.
The world has already warmed 1.1°C (2°F). Current projections based on planned emissions reductions over the next decade will reach 2.7 °C (4.9 °F) by 2100.
Scientists say that increased global warming over the coming decades would melt much of the planet’s ice, raise global sea levels and dramatically increase the likelihood and severity of extreme weather. They say that with every tenth of a degree of warming, the dangers increase faster.
Other goals of the meeting are for rich countries to give poor countries $100 billion a year in climate aid and reach an agreement to spend half of the money to adapt to the worsening climate impacts.
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