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2.28pm EDT
14:28Closing summary
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1.33pm EDT
13:33If we don’t fix our climate, it will be an economic catastrophe – Johnson
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1.15pm EDT
13:15Boris Johnson ‘cautiously optimistic’ about reaching 1.5C deal
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1.08pm EDT
13:08‘You can shove your climate crisis up your arse’: Greta Thunberg sings at Cop26
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12.52pm EDT
12:52Boris Johnson to give press conference
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12.48pm EDT
12:48‘We have seen firsthand the impact of climate change’ says Rwanda PM
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11.27am EDT
11:27We have not done enough to get to 1.5C yet – PM spokesperson
2.28pm EDT
14:28
Closing summary
The conference is over for today. So it’s goodbye from me for now. We’ll be back tomorrow morning, but here’s a roundup of what’s happened this afternoon:
- Boris Johnson has declared he is “cautiously optimistic” about a deal at Cop26 to keep global temperature rises below 1.5C as he urged China to commit to bringing emissions down by 2025.
- The US president, Joe Biden, has announced a pledge to cut global methane emissions by 30% by 2030. Reducing these emissions was touted as one of the most immediate opportunities to slow global heating ahead of the summit.
- A plan to coordinate the introduction of clean technologies in order to rapidly drive down their cost has been agreed at the Cop26 summit by world leaders, including the UK, US, India and China.
- The prime minister of Rwanda has told of how his country has witnessed the impact of climate change “first hand, including floods, draughts and landslides have cost livelihoods … and cost many lives.”
- African countries are preparing to spend at least $6bn a year from their tax revenues on adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis and are calling on the rich world to provide $2.5bn a year for the next five years to enable them to meet their goals.
- Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has defended his trip to space telling delegates that it made him realise how “finite and fragile” the Earth is.
- And Police Scotland has apologised to women in Glasgow who had to walk home in darkness on Monday night after well-lit streets were blocked off due to Cop26 climate summit security concerns.
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at 4.08pm EDT
2.14pm EDT
14:14
Youth and Indigenous activists, and others most affected by climate change, staged an action marking the end of the World Leaders Summit just opposite the conference centre on Tuesday evening, calling on negotiators to “End Climate Betrayal” with concrete action over the next two weeks.
Holding up huge illuminated letters, the action follows on from the open letter to world leaders sent by Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate and Mitzi Tan to enact a 5-point plan for the climate, which has been signed by more than one million people globally.
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2.03pm EDT
14:03
More reaction to the Biden methane pledge from earlier today. Raymond Pierrehumbert, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, says: “As things stand, methane is mostly just a distraction from the main job of ridding the world economy of fossil fuel burning and its associated carbon dioxide emissions.”
Actions to control methane are only really useful if the planet is on track to achieve net zero carbon emissions in the next few decades. He said: “We are sadly not yet in that world, and until we are, methane is just a sideshow.”
Professor Myles Allen, professor of Geosystem science at Oxford, said a 30% cut in global methane emissions would reduce global temperatures by around one-tenth of a degree.
“Meanwhile, carbon dioxide emissions are driving temperatures up by over two-tenths of a degree per decade. Unless we get carbon dioxide on a path to net zero by mid-century, action on methane today won’t have much impact on peak warming,” he said.
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1.45pm EDT
13:45
Johnson said companies and financial institutions have an important role in stopping deforestation and that consumer pressure is also key. Lastly, asked whether President Macron left early after falling out with the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson says: “We are working very closely with our French friends and partners on the things that matter most to the people of the world, which are climate change and reducing CO2.”
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1.39pm EDT
13:39
Asked about India’s net zero target being for 2070, Johnson says: “I think the most important thing that they’ve said is that they want to decarbonise so much of their power system by 2030. That’s a massive commitment.”
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1.38pm EDT
13:38
On China, he says it is engaging on the matter of climate change but that the world needs more progress from the Asian country. “I think we need China to make commitments, China has made a substantial commitment to move to net zero by the middle of the century, 2050 or before. Let’s see where we get to with China … let’s see where that adds up to.” He adds that China has committed to stop financing overseas coal.
1.37pm EDT
13:37
Asked about President Xi Jinping of China’s lack of attendance at Cop26, Johnson says you have to respect his decision not to come to the summit “because of the pandemic”. He said Russian president Vladimir Putin is not attending for the same reason.
1.33pm EDT
13:33
If we don’t fix our climate, it will be an economic catastrophe – Johnson
More from Johnson: “If we don’t fix our climate, it will be an economic catastrophe. I also happen to think there is a great wisdom in the British people that think this is an issue that needs to be fixed.”
He refers to a graph presented yesterday by Sir David Attenborough depicting the increase in CO2 emissions. “They can see that, they’re not dumb,” he says.
He says the climate crisis will be tackled by creating high-wage, high-skilled jobs in green technologies.
Asked by a Daily Express journalist whether there should be a public vote on net zero, he says: “As for your brilliant suggestion of a referendum, I think this country has had quite enough referendums to be getting on with.”
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1.31pm EDT
13:31
Speaking about the impact of the climate crisis, Johnson says: “When it comes to helping countries to transition, there is a huge amount to do. We have the tools to do it. And we certainly have, in theory, the finance to do it. Mark Carney would say hundreds of trillions of dollars, others would say tens of trillions, that can be leveraged by the public sector and by our investment. But I’m not going to disagree with anyone that says the world has a lot more to do.”
1.25pm EDT
13:25
Boris Johnson tells the BBC’s Laura Kuenssburg that we are starting to see the plans behind the pledges made in Paris in 2015. He says: “I think what you are starting to see here is a sense of how actually you can deliver those cuts in CO2.” However, he admits there is still a lot of work to do to put plans into practice.
1.22pm EDT
13:22
“The world leaders may be leaving, but the eyes of the world are on our negotiators and we have your numbers,” says Johnson, who is due to fly back to London this evening.
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1.22pm EDT
13:22
Johnson continues: “We’ve been asking for action on coal, cars, cash and trees and after just a couple of days we can certainly begin to tick three of those boxes – we are beginning to write the tick.
“That’s all happened because we have been able to come together in Glasgow.”
He goes on to say that the clock in the doomsday scenario is still ticking but says “we have a bomb disposal team on site and they are starting to snip some of the wires, some of the right wires I hope.”
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1.21pm EDT
13:21
Johnson is reeling off what he perceives to be successes from the Cop26 summit so far. He says that 90% of the world’s economy is now working towards net zero, including “India keeping 1bn tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere by switching half its power grid to renewable energy”. He added: “It’s not just that we are putting forward better or bigger targets but the world is putting forward the plans to reach those targets.”
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1.17pm EDT
13:17
Johnson adds: “90% of the world has now signed up to net zero including India,” in reference to yesterday’s announcement from India. “We will keep working with world leaders to get to net zero sooner.”
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1.15pm EDT
13:15
Boris Johnson ‘cautiously optimistic’ about reaching 1.5C deal
Johnson starting to speak: “We must take care to guard against false hope… still a very long way to go. I am cautiously optimistic… After two days of talks we’ve pulled back a goal or two from being 1-5 down.”
Updated
at 4.10pm EDT
1.08pm EDT
13:08
‘You can shove your climate crisis up your arse’: Greta Thunberg sings at Cop26
As we wait for Boris Johnson’s press conference we can update you with some choice words that climate activist Greta Thunberg had for the world leaders inside the Cop26 conference in Glasgow.
Joined by some of the many activists rallying around the climate change meeting, Thunberg decried inaction from politicians and big business, saying: “We are not going to let them get away with it anymore.”
Updated
at 1.11pm EDT