United States President Joe Biden has said this is a “decisive decade” to tackle the climate crisis, urging world leaders that this was no time to “hang back”.
World leaders are addressing a United Nations conference critical to averting the most disastrous effects of climate change, their challenge made even more daunting by the failure of major industrial nations to agree on ambitious new commitments.
The COP26 conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow opened on Monday, a day after the G20 economies failed to commit to a 2050 target to halt net-carbon emissions – a deadline widely cited as necessary to prevent the most extreme global warming.
Instead, their talks in Rome only recognised “the key relevance” of halting net emissions “by or around mid-century”, set no timetable for phasing out coal at home and watered-down promises to cut emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas many times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed the opening ceremony, with other speakers set to include British natural historian David Attenborough and the Prince of Wales.
Guterres told world leaders they needed need “maximum ambition” to make the summit a success.
“Enough of brutalising 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,” he said.
