COP26 curtain raiser delivers rhetoric and heartfelt pleas for action

How will the world remember the Glasgow climate summit? It is a question that can only be answered weeks, perhaps years, from now.

But on the opening day of COP26, the choices were starkly illustrated.

On the south bank of the Clyde, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed a rally in Govan’s Festival Park, denouncing those who were “pretending to take our future seriously” and “pretending to take the present seriously”.

To the north of the river, in the summit’s blue zone, world leaders sat solemnly as one speaker after the next addressed the opening ceremony, talking of the need for change, and recounting all too familiar stories of how the climate crisis is destroying lives and entire communities.

It is fitting the hall of the SEC venue that hosted the ceremony has been renamed Cairn Gorm. No title better illustrates the scale of the challenge facing Boris Johnson and his team, who must perform the role of broker cum referee during the next fortnight of intensive negotiations.

There is a mountain to be overcome to strike a transformational deal that limits global warming to 1.5C, and sets in motion long-term foundational changes to the international financial system. The Prime Minister is in the driving seat at a turning point for humanity. The question now is which way we turn.

If the first day of COP26 was any guide, Mr Johnson risked giving the impression he regarded the journey as something of a Wodehousian romp.

At an opening ceremony dominated by grave warnings and heartfelt pleas, he took his fellow leaders and a worldwide television audience on a rhetorical detour, opening his speech with a reference to James Bond.

Greta Thunberg attends a Youth Climate Activist Rally this afternoon in Festival Park, Glasgow. Picture: Lisa Ferguson LEADERS OF AROUND THE WORLD GATHER AT COP26 IN GLASGOW TO DISCUSS CLIMATE CHANGE

“The tragedy is that this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real,” Mr Johnson said, retreating further into a gnawing metaphor designed to emphasis the ticking time bomb facing the planet.

Not since the pigeon double-take scene in Moonraker has the famous spy’s credibility been quite so tarnished.

If the muted reaction inside the room was any guide, Mr Johnson's efforts at humour and levity landed like a drunk’s punch.

Not because his material was not recognised by the international audience - after all, jokes about James Bond and belching cattle are as common as common denominators get – but simply because they failed to acknowledge the mood.

Prime minister Boris Johnson walks off the stage after addressing the COP26 opening ceremony. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell / Pool/AFP/Getty

Several of those who addressed the first showpiece event of the conference seemed at times close to tears as they urged world leaders to acknowledge the urgency of the climate crisis. It is no coincidence they were directly affected by it.

Elizabeth Wathuti, a climate activist from Kenya, told of coming across three young children crying at the side of a river after walking 12 miles with their mother in the forlorn hope of finding water.

The 26-year-old then asked the world’s most powerful people to fall silent in memory of the billions who were not present in Glasgow, whose stories were not being heard, and whose suffering was not being felt.

“Please open your hearts,” she implored. “If you allow yourself to feel it, the heartbreak and the injustice is hard to bear.”

Mia Amor Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, spoke passionately – and at times angrily – about the looming “death sentence” facing her nation and other island archipelagos as global temperatures – and sea levels – continued to rise. “Simply put,” she questioned, “when will leaders lead?”

Against such pleas for action, Mr Johnson’s pop culture invocations felt trite and trivial, although if his blunt reference to 007 had the effect of concentrating minds on the looming environmental disaster, it will be a cringe worth enduring, and the Prime Minister’s use of doomsday imagery produced some powerful lines. “It is,” he told the audience, “one minute to midnight.”

He also struck upon a resonant note when he warned his fellow leaders they would be judged by future generations with "bitterness and resentment" if they failed to act.

Overall, however, his address stumbled across too many discordant chords to achieve any kind of harmony or power.

It merely confirmed our Prime Minister is a uniquely unserious man, and cemented the idea the best thing he could do to usher in progress would be to leave his negotiating team to putting in the hard yards.

By contrast, the speaker who made the greatest impact during the seventy minute ceremony was Sir David Attenborough.

Aided by a concise and elegant short film demonstrating the catastrophic consequences of rising carbon emissions, the 95-year-old addressed the crowd – and a watching world – with the energy and indignation of a man a quarter of his age.

The veteran naturalist delivered a speech rich in detail and emotion, and the most captivating moments came when he expressed incredulity at mankind’s capacity for selfishness and, ultimately, self-destruction.

"Is this how our story is due to end?” he asked.

“A tale of the smartest species doomed by that all too human characteristic of failing to see the bigger picture in pursuit of short-term goals?"

Elsewhere, UN secretary general António Guterres impressed with a concise and, at times, necessarily stark speech.

He warned humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels was pushing it to the brink, a situation with only a limited number of outcomes. “Either we stop it, or it stops us,” he reasoned.

Failure, Mr Guterres said, was not an option, because failure was a death sentence.

He went on to spell out some of the specific actions required – not least around climate finance – in a way that Mr Johnson did not, and acknowledged the special responsibility on the shoulders of developed countries to spearhead the effort.

He also gave voice to some long-standing problems in the fight against climate change, such as the “deficit of credibility” and “surplus of confusion” that exists around emissions reductions and net zero targets.

His address ended with a manifesto-style rally which, by way of happy accident, echoed a famous monologue from Scottish cinematic history. “Choose ambition,” Mr Guterres said “Choose solidarity. Choose to safeguard our future and save humanity.”

Elsewhere, other high-profile speakers had notably less impact.

The Duke of Rothesay’s address was occasionally perceptive, and momentarily intriguing when he spoke of the need for a “vast military style” campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector in the right against climate change.

For the most part, however, it was an uninspiring piece of oratory, weighed down by buzzwords and jargon.

There is a growing sense the scale of the challenge requires nothing more than revolution. A 72-year-old referencing a “global systems level solution” and “leveraging the circular bio-economy” falls some way short of that.

But then, even he must know that his peers failed in their duty to combat the climate catastrophe. Now a new generation grows all the more impatient at the same old games that are being played.

The next two weeks will determine if there is action to supplant the oratory and bombast. It is easy to choose the right words. It is even easier to choose the wrong ones.

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