Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t JoNova; UK PM Boris Johnson has claimed COP26 is “snipping the wires on the climate doomsday device”, but rejected the idea of a referendum on Net Zero, claiming the public should not be concerned about his trillion dollar planned expenditure.

Upbeat Boris says COP26 is ‘snipping the wires of the climate change doomsday device’ as he hails deals to end ‘great chainsaw massacre’ of forests and cut methane – despite India and China rejecting 2050 Net Zero goal

• Boris Johnson has held a press conference wrapping up leaders’ summit at the COP26 summit in Glasgow
• The PM has been trumpeting a deal with 100 countries including Brazil and CHina to protect world’s forests
• India has inflicted a setback by only committing to reach Net Zero by 2070 while China is aiming for 2060   

By JAMES TAPSFIELD, POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 22:00 AEDT, 2 November 2021 | UPDATED: 06:07 AEDT, 3 November 2021

Boris Johnson today insisted COP26 is ‘snipping the wires’ of the climate change ‘doomsday device’ as he hailed deals on forests and cutting methane.

At a press conference wrapping up the gathering of leaders in Glasgow, the PM warned that there is a ‘long way to go’ and there must be no backsliding from countries.

But he revived his description yesterday of global warming as a bomb that needed to be defused, James Bond style. ‘The clock on the doomsday device is still ticking but we have got a bomb disposal team on site and they are starting to snip the wires – I hope the right wires,’ he said.     

The gathering in Glasgow has suffered some setbacks as major polluters China confirmed a 2060 Net Zero target and India only committed to 2070 – two decades after the UK and other powers.  

But British officials have been encouraged by PM Narendra Modi’s commitment to slash carbon emissions by 2030. 

And scores of countries have signed up to a US-EU initiative to cut methane emissions by 30 per cent by the end of the decade, in what is seen as one of the fastest ways of reducing the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 

Mr Johnson rejected the idea of a referendum on whether the UK should be aiming for Net Zero by 2050, saying the country had ‘probably had enough’ of such campaigns.

And he insisted the public should not be concerned about the estimated one-trillion pound cost of the drive over the next 30 years. Mr Johnson said British people are not ‘dumb’ and recognised that ‘if we don’t do this it will be an economic catastrophe’. 

Challenged about the absence of China, Mr Johnson stressed that although Xi Jinping did not come to Glasgow  ‘that doesn’t mean the Chinese are not engaging,’ as there was a ‘high-level’ delegation.

‘He didn’t want to come because of the pandemic,’ the PM said. ‘You have got to respect that.’ 

He said he had the same explanation from Russian president Vladimir Putin.   

Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10156087/Boris-trumpets-14bn-deal-protect-forests-India-waters-Net-Zero.html

Have President Putin and President Xi Jinping really both developed a sudden fear of Covid? Is that the real reason they didn’t show up at COP26?

The Daily Mail article contains lots of photos of world leaders who seem to have forgotten their masks. But both Putin an Xi Jinping are frequently filmed maskless on their home turf.

BoJo’s pledge to save the world’s forests is a grand gesture, but Britain currently relies on mass deforestation to keep the lights on. The giant UK Drax biomass generator is currently supplied by “chainsaw massacring” forests in southern US states. UK PM Boris Johnson didn’t offer an explanation of what Drax will burn, after the COP26 pledge to save the world’s forests ends the supply of US wood chips to British biomass generators. Perhaps there will be a a long transition period.

BoJo’s rejection of holding a referendum on his trillion dollar Net Zero plan is understandable. What if ordinary people unexpectedly voted “no”? The British people lost the trust of the the UK establishment during the Brexit referendum, when they unexpectedly rejected the government position, and voted to leave the EU. That trillion dollars of planned government climate expenditure is way too important, to risk allowing ordinary people to mess things up with another unplanned referendum result.

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