Britain needs to find a new high-level leader of its team preparing for this year’s crunch climate talks in Glasgow as a matter of extreme urgency.
That is the clear message from politicians, senior scientists and climate experts following last week’s sacking of Claire O’Neill as president of the climate talks, known as COP26.
Among those who have been touted to take over the task of preparing for the climate conference include Michael Gove, Zac Goldsmith and Andrea Leadsom. Former Conservative leaders William Hague and Michael Howard have also been suggested as possible candidates.
“It is going to have to be a very senior, experienced politician or diplomat if we are to have a hope of saving these talks,” said one senior source. “We have fallen badly behind in our preparations for the conference, which is essentially our last real hope of halting dangerous global warming, and we need a big hitter to get us back on track.”
Although the summit is not until November, massive diplomatic and logistical hurdles will have to be overcome if the talks are to succeed. Governments worldwide are meant to offer tough new targets, agreed in Paris in 2015, for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent the world overheating dangerously later this century.
However, Britain has yet to hold a single climate cabinet meeting since it agreed to host COP26. At the same time many countries, including US, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Russia, have revealed growing hostility to the Paris agreement to end the world’s addiction to fossil fuel burning.
“Time is now really against us, for there are fewer than 10 months to go to COP26,” said Professor Dave Reay, chair in carbon management, at Edinburgh University. “Claire O’Neill rightly pointed out that the Glasgow COP was our ‘last shot’ at delivering on the Paris climate goals. At this rate we won’t even have the gun loaded.’’
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, is scheduled to attend the official launch of COP26 on Tuesday and is expected to name O’Neill’s successor beforehand. Johnson is expected to insist that his government takes its role as organiser of the conference extremely seriously and has made it clear he or she will be someone “at a ministerial level”.
His decision to replace O’Neil as COP26 president has been attributed to a number of factors, including her lack of status and experience. Her highest post was as junior minister in Theresa May’s government before standing down as an MP last year. That left her free to concentrate on her duties as COP26 president, but outside cabinet discussions.
By contrast, when the French staged the COP21 meeting in Paris in 2015 they gave the presidency to Laurent Fabius, who was then French foreign minister.
In addition, there have been complaints about her abrasive manner. In November 2018 three unions wrote to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, where she was a minister, to raise allegations of shouting and bullying civil servants. However, O’Neill has denied the claims and no action followed.
“Whoever becomes president of COP26, they face an enormous task,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “We will have to persuade countries that they have to make pledges to cut carbon emissions that are far more ambitious than those they are currently offering. Given the timetable for the conference, that is going to be very hard work.”