Monday, October 25, 2021

Big concern about “tough summit”
Boris Johnson warns of failure of COP26 climate conference

A few days before the start of the UN climate conference COP26, host Boris Johnson warned that the meeting would fail.

“I am very concerned because this could go wrong and we may not get the necessary agreements,” the British prime minister said in a Q&A session with school children around the world on Monday. “It’s on the knife edge, it’s pretty tough, but I think it can work.”

The COP will begin next Sunday (31 October) in Glasgow, Scotland. It aims to discuss how to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era in Paris in 2015. For this, all countries should prepare an action plan. However, many states are still deficient or not going far enough.

“This summit is going to be very, very difficult,” Johnson said. He expected peer pressure at the meeting in Glasgow. At least two important politicians will be missing in Scotland, along with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It is not clear that we are making the progress that we need,” Johnson said. He criticized that about a dozen corporations are responsible for most of the world’s plastic waste. The Prime Minister called for finding other methods of packaging. Also everyone should do more to avoid plastic.