Glasgow Climate Summit: Boris Johnson urges world leaders to ditch coal

• Alok Sharma, President of COP26 "Leaders have to raise the bar"

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"Premier" Boris Johnson has urged world leaders to leave the talk and debate behind and move "to real-world action" on climate change.

In his opening speech at COP26 in Glasgow, Johnson brought to the table the four fronts that he believed will make a difference in the next decade: the abandonment of coal, the push for electric cars, the money for international financing and the tree plantation.

"No more hopes, goals and aspirations, however valuable, but clear commitments and concrete timetables

for change," declared Johnson, paraphrasing Gerta Thunberg herself before more than a hundred world leaders (including Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez). : "All promises will be nothing but blah, blah, blah" ....

President Xi Jinping, absent from the Scottish city, nevertheless sent a disturbing signal.

Xi reiterated the commitments already announced by China ("peak" of emissions in 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060) and assured that the steps that his country will take "represent a profound economic and social change."

Xi ignored the advice of other world leaders, including Boris Johnson himself in a telephone conversation last week, and did not use the summit to make "meaningful announcements

.

China, the world's largest emitter and responsible for 27% of anthropogenic CO2, recently anticipated that it will stop financing coal projects abroad, but refused to make commitments to stop building thermal power plants within its territory.

Nor did they like the sudden absence of the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who canceled, apparently at the last minute and for "protocol" reasons, his planned trip to Scotland to participate in the UN Conference on Climate Change COP26, reports Efe .

The Turkish leader, who was at the G-20 meeting in Rome, explained that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson "was a great help" regarding Ankara's demands, but the Scottish side "did not comply with the requirements. demands ".

The Scottish authorities did not comply with the Turkish "demands of protocol", Erdogan told Star TV news editor Nazli Çelik, explaining the reasons for his decision not to travel, as planned, to the city of Glasgow, where he was celebrates the summit on climate change.

Turkey's main opposition party, the social democrat CHP, criticized the head of state for not attending the important international meeting, attributing that decision to the fact that the sole objective of Erdogan's trip to Scotland was to meet with his American counterpart, Joe Biden, a meeting which took place in Rome, during the G20 summit.

David Attenborough's appeal

UN Secretary General António Guterres pointed directly at the dark clouds hanging over Glasgow: "Optimism for the climate is an illusion."

Guterres reminded leaders to address civil society priorities, with a direct reference to

: "We must listen, act and choose wisely. Choose

Boris Johnson (left), António Guterres, UN Secretary General and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Alastair Grant / AP

With his telluric voice, occasionally relying on images of nature, testimonies from and dramatic statistics, naturalist

: "I have watched the decline of nature throughout my life; you can witness a wonderful recovery (...) The key is to turn around a figure, 414 particles per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, which has risen spectacularly in recent decades ".

"Humanity has prospered in the last 10,000 years thanks mainly to the stability of the climate, which has been possible while we were below 350 ppm," Attenborough recalled.

"The human being is a species that has always stood out for knowing how to solve problems.

We must use this opportunity to create a more egalitarian world. Our motivation should not be fear, but rather fear. hope. The world is watching us ", assured the naturalist

Front of Russia, Australia and India for coal power plants

Russia, Australia and India also closed ranks against attempts to set the 2030 limit for the construction of new coal plants within their respective countries, initially contained in a draft that was circulated during the G20 summit in Rome and to which

newspaper had access

The three countries, together with China, are expected to also try to boycott any similar action at COP26, in clear contradiction to their respective commitments to reach "zero emissions" between 2050 and 2060.

In his speech to the COP26 plenary, Boris Johnson recalled the close link between the abandonment of coal and the reduction of emissions.

The Conservative leader stressed in his recent conversation with Xi Jinping how the United Kingdom has gone from obtaining 40% of its energy from coal in 2008 (when he visited Beijing as the mayor of London) to 1% in the energy mix this year. .

Johnson urged leaders to raise the bar by following the path set by the UK, committed to a 68% emission reduction this decade.

The conservative leader also called on the private sector "to decarbonize the economy" and pave the way for the ecological transition that has turned the British Isles "into the Saudi Arabia" of the wind.

"Humanity is in a race against time against climate change,"

warned Johnson.

If we don't take climate change seriously today, it will be too late for our children tomorrow."

The "premier" recalled the manifest intention in the choice of Glasgow, the city in which James Watt developed the steam engine: "Yes my friends, we have brought you to the same place where the apocalypse machine began to work (... ) We, the "developed" countries, have a special responsibility to the rest of the world. "

The presence in Glasgow of leaders such as US President Joe Biden - under former Vice President Al Gore and his special envoy for climate John Kerry - and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, especially effusive towards Johnson himself and the Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres, diverted attention to the notorious absence of China.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who came to figure the climate "deniers" alongside Donald Trump, reiterated his commitment to carbon neutrality in 2050, in the Johnson Government's greatest diplomatic achievement to date. in the fishing dispute with France that has pawned the start of COP26.

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