Mozidur Rahman Biswas :
UK’s Queen Elizabeth II has expressed her irritation and criticized the global leaders who talk about climate change but do nothing to address global warming adding that it is still unclear who would turn up to the COP26 climate summit scheduled to be held in Glasgow next November. Her comment on climate change inaction passed on recently, many a way, a rare public foray into big power climate politics leading to worries that Chinese President Xi Jineng, leader of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, would not attend the 31October -12 November Summit. The 95-year-old British monarch was filmed on a phone as she visited Cardiff to open the Welsh parliament last Thursday.
At one point, speaking to her daughter-in-law Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and parliament presiding officer Elin Jones, she said “I’ve been hearing all about COP… I still don’t know whose coming.” On the recording, parts of which are inaudible, the queen also appears to say it is “irritating” when “they talk, but they don’t do.”Britain, which hosts the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, in Glasgow on Oct. 31-Nov 12, is seeking to get big power support for a more radical plan to tackle climate change. “It is now pretty clear that Xi is not going to turn up and the PM has been told that, “The Times quoted an unidentified British source as saying “What we don’t know is what stance the Chinese are going to take.”
The UK’s Queen is due to welcome leaders from around the world to COP26, a climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where several heads of state or government, including China’s Xi Jinping, have not yet clearly said whether they will attend. Though a government minister, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, said the queen’s comments had not been intended for broadcast adding that such comments made in private should stay private, but we all share the desire to see progress made and we know there will be hundreds of leaders coming to Glasgow for COP 26, speaking with Sky News.
In Britain’s constitutional monarchy the queen is meant to be above politics, and she rarely expresses opinions in public. Her son and heir, Prince Charles, though, has long been outspoken on environmental issues and lastly Charles’ son Prince William has also taken up the cause, backing the Earth-shot Prize for environmental innovation that will be awarded. In an interview with the BBC broadcast, William criticized space tourism, saying the world’s greatest minds should focus on fixing the Earth instead, the comments were aired a day after the 90-year-old “Star Trek” actor William Shatner became the oldest person to fly to space, in a rocket funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
In the backdrop of the many such developments on the ensuing summit, Western leaders such as US President Joe Biden and British Morris Johnson have repeatedly warned that the world must change to slow climate change, but many environmental activists say leaders talk too much and do too little. Meanwhile, based on these comments on the issue Joe Biden’s administration has issued a 40 page report warning that the climate crises ‘Poses serious and systematic threat and risks to the US Economy and the Financial system’ and as such setting out necessary steps for action as ‘Climate impacts are already affecting American job, homes, families hard-earned savings and business. The report lays out what the White House calls government wide plans to protect the world’s bigger economy.
In the context of the contradictory syndrome, the doubt is still mounting whether the outcome of the Climate Summit would fulfil the expectations across the world, main focus of which centres on poverty-free, climate-tolerant economic situation necessitated for sustainable development here and there in the Earth to overcome the devastating havoc and damages due to ongoing Covid-19 crisis.
(Mozidur Rahman Biswas is
a Senior Journalist).
