Why Johnson's Spin Did Not Live Up To The Cop26 Reality

“Even the most pessimistic commentator will tell you that the goal of restricting the growth in temperatures to 1.5C is still alive,” Boris Johnson said in his response to the Cop26 summit.

- Andrew Grice

“Even the most pessimistic commentator will tell you that the goal of restricting the growth in temperatures to 1.5C is still alive,” Boris Johnson said in his response to the Cop26 summit.

A conference that ended in what he believes is a “game-changing agreement”.

As usual, his spin did not quite match up to reality. True, the Glasgow conference was a triumph of UK diplomacy; herding almost 200 countries to the same place was never going to be easy and might have eluded another host. The UK managed it – even if Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, broke with protocol by allowing India and China to water down the summit’s final wording on coal from “phase out” to “phase down” without clearing it with the world’s poorer countries.

To his credit, Sharma apologised and admitted the pulse of 1.5C is “weak”. While hailing the deal as “historic”, he conceded the summit was only a “fragile win”.