As the COP26 summit approaches, the expectations going in seem to diminish with every passing day. With four of the top ten CO2 emitters already refusing to send their respective leaders, the “last ditch effort” to “keep 1.5c alive” now looks like a remote prospect – even to the Prime Minister. In a frank interview with Bloomberg, Boris laid out the problems going in to the Glasgow summit at the end of the month: 

“I think COP was always going to be extremely tough, we’re hoping that we’ll get a good turnout in spite of the pandemic. What we want people to focus on is their nationally determined contributions, in reducing their CO2, making those hard pledges. Plus we want commitments on coal, cars, cash and trees.

“We need the nationally determined contributions, we need to keep 1.5 alive, we need to restrict the growth in temperatures to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century. We think that with the commitments that we’re seeing we could, we could do it but we’re going to need to see some real action from the participants in Glasgow.”

Or rather, some real action from those who won’t even show up…