World leaders arrived in Glasgow for the United Nations COP26 climate summit amid increased scepticism that will agree measures required to limit dangerous global warming.
US President Joe Biden, UK prime minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau were among the first of the 120 national leaders to arrive at the venue.
It has also emerged that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will join Prince Charles, the next in line to the UK throne, at COP26, at an event promoting the “greening” of north Africa.
The move follows an informal meeting between Prince Charles and the billionaire businessman and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez on Sunday night following the G20 summit in Rome
Sunday’s G20 summit ended on a downbeat note after only 12 of the 20 countries committed to be carbon neutral by 2050.
Biden arrived in Glasgow with his domestic climate agenda yet to be passed by a Congress controlled by his own party.
Meanwhile, delegates arriving at COP26 faced long queues to get into the Campus this morning.
Many delegates and media representatives were forced to queue for almost two hours before getting into the venue.
UN Secretary General António Guterres
UN Secretary General António Guterres warned world leaders to stop treating the planet “like a toilet” in his opening address to the COP26 climate summit.
In a hard-hitting warning to the heads of states gathered in Glasgow, Guterres said: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice. Either we stop it, or it stops us. It’s time to say enough. Enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves.”
“If commitments fall short at the end of this COP, countries must revisit their national climate plans and policies – not every five years (but) every year and every moment,” Guterres told leaders at the COP26 opening ceremony.
Guterres warned that the six years since the Paris Agreement in 2015, in which world governments agreed to limit global warming to as close to 1.5°C as possible and below 2°C, had been the six hottest years on record.
Johnson’s Opening Speech
UK prime minister said global leaders were “in roughly the same position” as James Bond as he opened the leaders summit section of the UN Cop26 in Glasgow.
Johnson said that James Bond “generally comes to the climax of his highly lucrative films strapped to a doomsday device, desperately trying to work out which coloured wire to pull to turn it off, while a red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation that will end human life as we know it”.
He added: “We are in roughly the same position, my fellow global leaders, as James Bond today – except that the tragedy is this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real.The clock is ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and furnaces and engines with which we are pumping carbon into the air faster and faster.”
Johnson continued: Johnson has urged world leaders not to “fluff our lines”, warning that younger generations will “not forgive us”.
He said: “Because if we fail, they will not forgive us – they will know that Glasgow was the historic turning point when history failed to turn. They will judge us with bitterness and with a resentment that eclipses any of the climate activists of today and they will be right. Cop26 will not and cannot be the end of the story on climate change.”
Prince Charles
Prince Charles, heir apparent to the British throne and most senior royal at COP26, told world leaders that climate change was a bigger threat to the globe than the COVID-19 pandemic.
He warned: “Time has quite literally run out”, and called on global corporations to help fund the transition of poorer nations to net zero.
President Joe Biden
President Joe Biden said on Monday that the US will be able to meet net zero carbon emissions by 2030, in addition to an ambitious target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.
Over a gigaton of greenhouse gas emissions will be cut by 2030, Biden said at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow adding it is a moral and economic imperative to address climate change.“Glasgow must be the kick-off of a decade of ambition and innovation to preserve our shared future,” he said.
Biden is still trying to get a US$555 billion spending bill through the US Congress to boost clean energy, the biggest investment in US history to tackle global warming.
The Build-Back Better framework is set to make “historic” investments in clean energy, which Biden has called “the most significant investment to deal with the climate crisis than any advanced nation has made ever.”
Biden told COP26 that climate change is “ravaging the world” and that the “eye of history” is watching the deliberations of world leaders gathered in Glasgow.
President Emmanuel Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron said European nations have to shift from promises to action, asking every country at the COP26 to honor the 2015 financial commitments made in Paris.
During his address at the summit, he called on the world’s largest contributors of climate change to double down on their commitment to cut emissions.
“The key over the next 15 days at this COP is that the largest emitters whose national strategies do not align with our objective of 1.5C of global warming raise their efforts,” Macron said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
India’s prime minister on Monday announced 2070 as the target for his country to become carbon neutral during his speech at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.
Narendra Modi said India would reduce carbon missions by a total of one million tons between now and 2030 however the country will reach net zero by 2070.
He told world leaders during these critical talks that India would increase “non-fossil energy” by 10 percent by 2030 and increase the share of renewables and from around 38 percent to 50 percent by the same date.