UK's Johnson gives G-20 stark warning on climate change
ROME (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in Italy for a Group of 20 meeting on Friday with a stark warning: modern civilization could soon lie in ruins like ancient Rome if world leaders don’t act to curb climate change.
Johnson has one big goal at the G-20 gathering: to persuade the leaders of the world’s biggest economies to put their money where their mouth is at the U.N. climate summit in Scotland that starts Sunday.
Johnson will deploy his ebullience and his — admittedly divisive — charm to try to extract cash and carbon-cutting commitments from the G-20, which contains some of the world’s biggest carbon emitters, including China, the United States, India and Russia.
Johnson told reporters aboard his plane to Rome that the Eternal City's ruins “are a fantastic reminder, a memento mori to us today … that humanity, civilization, society can go backwards as well as forwards and when things start to go wrong they can go wrong with extraordinary speed.”
Still, hee has expressed doubts that the COP26 climate summit will achieve its aim of extracting enough carbon-cutting commitments to keep alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
Johnson will urge G-20 leaders to act more quickly, saying the world’s rich countries, which grew wealthy from using the fossil fuels that warm up the Earth, must bear the brunt of fighting climate change.
He said “unless we get this right in tackling climate change, we could see our world our civilization go backwards and consign future generations to a life far less agreeable than our own,” with mass migrations, water shortages and conflicts because of climate change.
Accounting for 75% of the world’s trade and 60% of its population, the G-20 has often...
