COP26: Greta Thunberg forces leaders to face 'hard realities' of government inaction, says Nicola Sturgeon

Climate activists such as Greta Thunberg make world leaders confront “hard realities” of government inaction when it comes to climate change, Nicola Sturgeon has said.

The First Minister said no world leader should be comfortable during the COP26 global climate conference, which began in earnest in Glasgow on Monday morning, and warned they should instead should be “bloody uncomfortable” due to their inaction.

Ms Sturgeon, speaking at an event organised by the WWF after meeting climate activists Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate in the conference’s ‘blue zone’, said these activists can force leaders out of complacency.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (centre) meets climate activists Greta Thunberg (left) and Vanessa Nakate (right) during the Cop26 summit at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow.

She said: “Those voices, often including for people like me, are really uncomfortable at times because they make us confront the hard realities of our own lack of delivery.

“But my goodness, they are so important to shake these sort of gatherings that will take place in here over the next few days out of the sense of complacency that surrounds them all too often.”

The climate activists discussed the importance of world leaders delivering on limiting global warming to 1.5C, and of the need for $100 billion of climate finance to be delivered.

Ms Sturgeon also announced a new £1 million Climate Justice Fund from the Scottish Government, which will help pay for damage and loss caused by adverse weather caused by climate change.

Ms Sturgeon said COP26 should be an event in which world leaders are made to feel “bloody uncomfortable” to force them into action.

She said: "What can everybody do? Make life really uncomfortable for any government, any leader that’s not doing enough. At times that will be my government and rightly so. We’ve all got to be pushed much harder, much faster.

"This summit should not feel comfortable for anybody in a position of leadership and responsibility. It should feel bloody uncomfortable because nobody yet is doing enough and that’s the reality.”

Speaking after the meeting with the activists, the SNP leader said she would prefer Scotland to be around the negotiating table, but the country would “corral” other subnational and state governments to do more on climate change in her role in the Under2 coalition of regional governments.

The First Minister said the biggest challenge facing Scotland was stopping drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, and added that delivery of promises, not simply rhetoric, should be what leaders are judged on.

Scotland has missed its climate targets in each of the past three years.

Ms Sturgeon said: “Take oil and gas, all countries have really difficult issues to confront. For a country like Scotland, oil and gas is the most difficult. Tens of thousands of jobs dependent on that.

"But that can’t be an excuse for saying let’s just keep going, drilling for oil and gas indefinitely because that’s catastrophic for the planet, so instead it has to mean, facing up to that is our biggest challenge and working out how we move away from it as quickly as possible.

"That is what we are trying to do, to create the alternative jobs so that we’re not leaving people on the scrapheap. If we only face up to the easy, the relatively easy things, we won’t get anywhere.”

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