(CU)_Ahead of the UN climate summit scheduled to be held in Glasgow, the leaders from the G20 industrialised nations met in Rome in order to discuss the global economic recovery, rising energy costs and the ongoing supply chain problems. During the meeting, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to urge his fellow leaders to attend COP26 with fixed plans to slash their greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the British leader, if the world leaders fail to make tangible commitments to tackle the climate crisis, it could lead to “very difficult geopolitical events” such as food shortages, mass migration. Sharing these views in a round of broadcast interviews ahead of the meeting, he revealed that he believes there is still a six out of ten probability of the COP summit producing the expected results.
“I think that everybody needs to focus,” he told the BBC. “What the UK has been trying to do is take the abstract concepts of net zero that we talked about in Paris six years ago, and to turn them into hard, sharp deliverables in terms of reducing coal use, reducing the use of internal combustion engines, planting millions of trees and getting the cash that the world needs to finance green technology.’’
According to the British leader, the failure to put the brakes on the climate crisis could lead to a decline in civilisation, similar to that which was caused by the collapse of the Roman Empire.
“If you increase the temperatures of the planet by four degrees or more, as they are predicted to do remorselessly, you’ll have seen the graphs, then you produce these really very difficult geopolitical events,” he told Channel 4 News. “You produce shortages, you produce desertification, habitat loss, movements, contests for water, for food, huge movements of peoples. Those are things that are going to be politically very, very difficult to control.”
Recalling how the Roman Empire fell as a result of uncontrolled immigration, PM Johnson warned that the same could happen again. “People should not be so conceited as to imagine that history is a one-way ratchet,” he said. “Unless you can make sure next week at COP in Glasgow that we keep alive this prospect of restricting the growth in the temperature of the planet then we really face a real problem for humanity.”
