Boris Johnson has begged COP26 negotiators to “pull together and drive for the line” to secure ambitious action on climate change,
As the global conference on climate change entered its second week the Prime Minister urged countries to be ready to “make the bold compromises and ambitious commitments needed”.
Johnson said: “There is one week left for COP26 to deliver for the world, and we must all pull together and drive for the line.”
The Prime Minister said nations had brought “ambition and action to help limit rising temperatures” in the first week but added: “we cannot underestimate the task at hand to keep 1.5C alive.”
As talks continue in Glasgow after a weekend of protests in the city and across the world climate activists said a much bigger push is needed from countries to keep to agreements.
Peter Betts, a leading expert on climate change who was the UK and EU lead negotiator in UN climate agreements, said it is “reasonably likely” that sufficient action will be taken to limit global temperatures rises.
COP26 has also seen commitments made to reduce deforestation, decrease methane production and move away from burning coal.
Betts said: “If you aggregate all of that stuff together, maybe we might be on track for something like 2C.”
“But the big proviso is countries need to implement what they have signed up to. That is where we need to focus, real pressure to make countries deliver what they have said they are going to do.”
He continued: “The decisions that are most important will be the decisions that are made in Beijing, in Delhi, in the capitals of South East Asia, so we have to find arguments that resonate with them.
Meanwhile UK Environment Secretary George Eustice, who is at the summit, suggested the government is looking at introducing a carbon border tax.
This would be a tax on goods such as food, mobile phones or cement coming to the UK from countries that do not meet the UK’s obligations on climate action.
He told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show it would take time to do and ideally would be done multilaterally.
“We are not going to export pollution,” he said. “If you don’t want to do that, you do want to consider something like a carbon border tax.”
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