World leaders dial up doomsday warning to kick-start COP26 climate talks in Glasgow

World leaders opened the COP26 UN climate conference in Glasgow with a doomsday warning. While UK PM Boris Johnson said that the world is facing an ecological "doomsday", UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said bluntly: "We are digging our own graves."

World leaders turned up the heat and resorted to end-of-the-world rhetoric Monday in an attempt to bring new urgency to sputtering international climate negotiations.

The metaphors were dramatic and mixed at the start of the talks, known as COP26. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described global warming as “a doomsday device” strapped to humanity. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told his colleagues that humans are “digging our own graves.” And Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, speaking for vulnerable island nations, added moral thunder, warning leaders not to “allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.”