U.K.'s Johnson warns of 'doomsday' as global climate summit begins

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson opened the global climate summit known as COP26 Monday, saying the world is strapped to a "doomsday device."

Johnson likened an ever-warming Earth's position to that of fictional secret agent James Bond — strapped to a bomb that will destroy the planet and trying to work out how to defuse it.

He told leaders that "we are in roughly the same position" — only now the "ticking doomsday device" is real and not fiction. The threat is climate change triggered by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, and he pointed out that it all started in Glasgow with James Watt's steam engine powered by coal.

He was kicking off the world leaders' summit portion of the Conference of Parties (COP), as it's known, which meets every year and is the global decision-making body set up to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in the early 1990s, and subsequent climate agreements.

The conference is aimed at getting agreement to curb carbon emissions fast enough to keep global warming to 1.5 C below pre-industrial levels. The world has already warmed 1.1 C. Current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7 C by the year 2100.

Johnson told the summit — which was delayed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic — that humanity had run down the clock when it comes to climate change, and the time for action is now. He pointed out that the more than 130 world leaders who gathered had an average age of older than 60, while the generations most harmed by climate change aren't yet born.

Johnson called for the end of coal-fired power plants and gasoline-powered cars along with a huge influx of cash from rich countries to poor to help them switch to greener economies and adapt to the worsening climate impacts.

Britain's leader struck a gloomy note on the eve of the conference, after leaders from the Group of 20 major economies made only modest climate commitments at their summit in Rome this weekend.

And that mood got only darker when United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres followed him.

"We are digging our own graves," Guterres said. "Our planet is changing before our eyes — from the ocean depths to mountaintops, from melting glaciers to relentless extreme weather events."

Prince Charles told the world leaders they need to "save our precious planet" and that "the eyes and hopes of the world are upon you."

After Johnson, Guterres, Prince Charles and an impassioned 95-year-old David Attenborough, scores of other leaders will traipse to the podium Monday and Tuesday at crucial international climate talks in Scotland and talk about what their country is going to do about the threat of global warming. From U.S. President Joe Biden to Seychelles President Wavel John Charles Ramkalawan, they are expected to say how their country will do its utmost, challenge colleagues to do more and generally turn up the rhetoric.

The biggest names, including Biden, Johnson, India's Narendra Modi, France's Emmanuel Macron and Ibrahim Solih, president of hard-hit Maldives, will take the stage Monday.