“Enough treating nature like a toilet”, claimed the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, during the inauguration of COP26.
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The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, he has inaugurated this Monday the summit of leaders of the COP26 in Glasgow (United Kingdom) with a call to turn the conference into the “beginning of the end” in the fight against climate change, so that the future generations suffer less the consequences of global warming.
“If we fail, our children will not forgive us. They will judge us bitterly, and they will be right,” Johnson told the 120 heads of state and government gathered this Monday and Tuesday at the UN climate summit.
The British Prime Minister has turned to the figure of the “most illustrious son of Scotland”, the spy James Bond, to make an analogy between his fictional adventures aimed at saving the world and the real threat to the planet that implies climate change by human action.
“We are almost in the same position as James Bond, except the tragedy is that this is not a movie and the countdown to the day of the end of the world is real and the clock is ticking, “said Johnson.
“With two degrees more, we will put the food supply at risk. With three degrees more, there will be more uncontrolled fires and five times more droughts. With four degrees more, we will say goodbye to cities like Miami or Alexandria,” he added.
Guterres: “It is time to say enough”
For his part, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has called on the international community to commit to cutting CO2 emissions by at least 45% by 2030 to avoid “digging our own grave.”
“It is time to say enough. Enough of brutalizing biodiversity, enough of killing ourselves with carbon, enough of treating nature as a toilet (…) and digging our own grave,” said Guterres during the opening ceremony.
The head of the United Nations has added that the climate summit should serve to “keep alive the goal of 1.5 degrees” and “cut emissions by 45% by 2030”.
Guterres has called to end “our addiction to fossil fuels, which is pushing humanity to the limit” and stressed that “recent climate announcements may give the impression that we are turning it around”, but “this is an illusion “since the planet is heading towards an increase in temperatures of 2.7 ºC at the end of the century.
Biden: “This decade will determine the next generations”
The president of United States, Joe Biden, has called for the summit to be “the starting point of a decade of ambition and innovation” to combat the “existential threat” of climate change.
“This is the decade that will determine the next generations. It is the decisive decade in which we have the opportunity to show ourselves that we can maintain the goal of (limiting warming to) 1.5 degrees,” he said in his speech at the conference.
The American has emphasized that climate change “is not hypothetical”, but that it already affects the lives of many people every day, also in their own country, in the form of uncontrolled fires, floods or droughts.
Spain will increase its climate financing
The President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, has announced that it will increase its climate financing for developing countries by 50% with the goal of reaching a contribution of 1.35 billion euros from 2025.
In his speech at the high-level segment of COP26, the president assured that Spain will reinforce foreign action on adaptation and, in this matter, Spain will contribute 30 million euros in 2022 to the National Adaptation Fund of Nations United.
In his opinion, if countries raise their level of ambition, they must support these objectives “with resources” and that is why he considers that the goal of reaching 100 billion dollars in climate financing globally “is going to be one of the litmus tests of COP26 when it comes to restoring trust between the countries of the North and the South “.
COP26, which runs until November 12 in Glasgow, will be the stage where the international community will review progress since the 2015 Paris Agreement and seek new commitments to prevent temperatures at the end of the century from rising more than 1.5 ° C compared to pre-industrial values.
Kingston is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
