COP this lot
WHETHER COP26 succeeds or fails, no one can accuse Britain of not throwing the kitchen sink at it.
The Queen, Charles, Wills and Kate, Sir David Attenborough — global icons, all — deployed to persuade the world to follow us into a green, global, second industrial revolution.
We hope all those presidents and prime ministers — with their private jets, gas-guzzling limo fleets and armies of flunkies — were paying attention.
Even Joe Biden, his eyes firmly shut
The Queen’s video address judged the tone perfectly, as ever
“When nations come together in common cause there is always room for hope,” she said.
How much more fruitful that optimism is likely to prove than the witless stunts and noisy, performative anger of the eco apocalypse cults.
Boris Johnson’s speech was, his 007 analogy aside, sombre and statesmanlike . . . an eye-opener for many among the vast TV audience who know of our PM only from the clueless left-wing portrayals of him as a mini-Trump.
But we fear even Boris lapsed into hyperbole with his “doomsday clock”.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, meanwhile, had to “unequivocally” apologise for comparing politicians who fail to act on climate change to those who “ignored what was happening in Nazi Germany”.
Leaders must be careful with their language.
They cannot outflank the hysteria of the likes of Extinction Rebellion.
Leave the fanatics to their histrionics and their relentless, destructive negativity.
They are pointless and self-defeating.
If you tell the world we’re on the brink of annihilation, that Earth is on fire, our children have no future and will hate us, you will trigger despair, not action.
Instead sell people hope for a cleaner, greener world — as our Queen did — and they will back it.
Show how it can make us all more prosperous, not poorer, and they will do so all the more enthusiastically.
Yesterday, India committed only to achieving net zero by 2070, 20 years later than the 2050 deadline the UK is pushing for and which we’re signed up to delivering ourselves.
China, the world’s biggest polluter by far, hasn’t even bothered to turn up.
That’s the elephant in the room. If only President Xi was.
Vax fax
WE wonder what more evidence the anti-vax mob need.
But, then, many are so deep down the conspiracy-theory rabbit hole that they no longer recognise reason.
Those not yet engulfed by the social media inferno of unscientific madness should consider this simple fact:
People with two jabs are 32 times less likely to die of Covid than those with none.
It’s why The Celeb Report has campaigned so hard to get the nation both jabbed and boostered.
When it’s your turn, don’t hesitate.
