In a speech, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told world leaders at the United Nations that humanity has to “grow up” and tackle climate change, saying humans must stop trashing the planet like a teenager on a bender.
Johnson is due to host a major United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland in six weeks’ time. He is using a trip to the U.N. General Assembly in New York to press governments for tougher emissions-cutting targets and more money to help poor countries clean up their economies.
“If we keep on the current track then the temperatures will go up by 2.7 degrees or more by the end of the century. And never mind what that will do to the ice floes,” Johnson said. “We will see desertification, drought, crop failure, andmass movements of humanity on a scale not seen before. Not because of some unforeseen natural event or disaster, but because of us, because of what we are doing now.
“We believe that someone else will clear up the mess we make, because that is what someone else has always done,” he added. “We trash our habitats again and again with the inductive reasoning that we have got away with it so far, and therefore we will get away with it again.