‘It is time for humanity to grow up’: Boris Johnson delivers COP26 plea to world leaders
UK Prime Minister delivers passionate paean to green economy in major climate speech at UN General Assembly
The world “must have the maturity and wisdom to act” on climate change, and the upcoming COP26 climate summit in Glasgow must mark “a turning point for humanity” if the most dangerous consequences of a warming planet are to be avoided, Boris Johnson has told fellow world leaders.
In his address to the UN General Assembly meeting in New York yesterday the UK Prime Minister delivered an idiosyncratic speech replete with his typical humour and obscure metaphors, as he castigated humanity’s “narcissism” and short-sightedness in failing to tackle the climate emergency.
Comparing human society’s behaviour to that of a teenager, he argued that “we believe that someone else will clear up the mess we make, because that is what someone else has always done”.
“We still cling with part of our minds to the infantile belief that the world was made for our gratification and pleasure and we combine this narcissism with an assumption of our own immortality,” Johnson said. “We trash our habitats again and again with the inductive reasoning that we have got away with it so far, and therefore we will get away with it again.”
However, he stressed that “the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end”, as he gave arguably his most passionate plea to date for global governments to come together at COP26 in Glasgow to try and solve the climate emergency with ambitious commitments.
“We are approaching that critical turning point – in less than two months – when we must show that we are capable of learning, and maturing, and finally taking responsibility for the destruction we are inflicting, not just upon our planet but ourselves,” Johnson said. “It is time for humanity to grow up.”
“The world – this precious blue sphere with its eggshell crust and wisp of an atmosphere – is not some indestructible toy, some bouncy plastic romper room against which we can hurl ourselves to our heart’s content,” he continued. “Daily, weekly, we are doing such irreversible damage that long before a million years are up, we will have made this beautiful planet effectively uninhabitable – not just for us but for many other species. And that is why the Glasgow COP26 summit is the turning point for humanity.”
His speech comes just weeks before thousands of global diplomates are expected to descend on Glasgow for the crucial UN summit, which I set to be one of the largest political events ever held on British soil, and at which UK as host is under major pressure to rally countries together behind ambitious climate action.
Hopes of COP26 delivering an ambitious outcome on a number of key fronts were given a major boost earlier this week thanks to crucial commitments from China and the USA at the UN General Assembly. President Xi Jinping announced on Tuesday that China would no long build or finance coal-fired power projects overseas – a landmark pledge that delivers a major blow for the carbon-intensive fossil fuel – shortly after Joe Biden vowed to double the USA’s climate finance support to developing nations to $11.4bn by 2025.
However, major concerns remain about attendance in Glasgow due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and access to vaccines, and as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly warned, mistrust between poorer and richer nations, and between the West and China, remains a major barrier to progress at the climate talks.
Action on climate change means action on jobs.
Greening the economy can grow the economy.
We can achieve those ambitions if we take the action required ahead of @COP26.#UNGA pic.twitter.com/6w0KT3AdFd
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) September 23, 2021
While lamenting humanity’s devastating impacts on the climate and natural world, Johnson also used his speech to drive home and optimistic vision thanks to the potential of green jobs and clean technologies – including “beautiful wind turbines” – from the net zero transition.
“We have the tools for a green industrial revolution but time is desperately short,” he said.
Investing in a green economy, he said, would help countries to “produce millions and millions of high wage, high skill jobs, and today’s workforce and the next generation will have the extra satisfaction of knowing that they are not only doing something useful – such as providing clean energy – but helping to save the planet at the same time”.
But Johnson stressed that he was “not one of those environmentalists who takes a moral pleasure in excoriating humanity for its excess” and as he rallied against using the green movement “as a pretext for a wholesale assault on capitalism”.
“The whole experience of the Covid pandemic is that the way to fix the problem is through science and innovation, the breakthroughs and the investment that are made possible by capitalism and by free markets, and it is through our Promethean faith in new green technology that we are cutting emissions in the UK,” the PM said.
Elsewhere, Johnson also sought to emphasise the importance of not just technological climate fixes, but also nature-based solutions, as he called for a major restoration of nature across the globe, and an ambitious biodiversity agreement between nations at the upcoming COP15 biodiversity summit.
In typical fashion, he even made room in his speech to reference muppets characters: “When Kermit the frog sang ‘It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green’, I want you to know he was wrong – and he was also unnecessarily rude to Miss Piggy.”
But with the world currently on track for around 2.7C or more by the end of the century, Johnson stressed that there was an urgent need for governments “to pledge collectively to achieve carbon neutrality – net zero – by the middle of the century”.
“And that will be an amazing moment if we can do it because it will mean that for the first time in centuries humanity is no longer adding to the budget of carbon in the atmosphere, no longer thickening that invisible quilt that is warming the planet, and it is fantastic that we now have countries representing 70 per cent of the world’s GDP committed to this objective,” Johnson said. “But if we are to stave off these hikes in temperature we must go further and faster – we need all countries to step up and commit to very substantial reductions by 2030 – and I passionately believe that we can do it by making commitments in four areas – coal, cars, cash and trees.”
Green groups welcomed Johnson’s speech, but stressed that more action was needed both from countries around the world, but within the UK itself from Johnson’s own government. It comes as the government gears up to unleash a raft of net zero policy plans ahead of COP26 which have long been sought by green businesses to provide certainty and clarity over the UK’s net zero pathway.
Kate Blagojevic, head of climate at Greenpeace UK said the PM was “quite right to say we’re at a turning point” but that his words “ring hollow when set against Johnson’s failure to take decisive action to cut emissions at home”.
“A Prime Minister who claims to see we’re in a climate crisis but backs the new Cambo oil field can’t claim to be serious about this crisis,” she said. “From ending the search for new oil to finally providing proper financial support for the economic recovery from covid and to help the public cut carbon from their homes, there really is no end of action the government can and should be doing. The problem right now is they’re is failing miserably.”
