The Latest: COP26 activists say leaders blowing ‘hot air’

The Latest on U.N. climate summit COP26 in Glasgow:

GLASGOW, Scotland — Activists in costumes have posed as world leaders playing in a traditional Scottish bagpipe band on Monday as world leaders came together at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow.

The Oxfam campaigners wore kilts and said that world leaders need to come up with more action and not only “hot air” to tackle the climate crisis.

“These leaders, instead of reducing emissions and putting the world on a safer path, they are just blowing hot air, and we have had enough of hot air and empty promises, what we are asking for is for concrete action,” Oxfam Climate Policy Lead Nafkote Dabi said.

“We need climate finance, poor countries need climate finance, vulnerable communities need climate finance, and they need to be serious about this, to support vulnerable countries, to adapt to the worst impact of the climate crisis.”

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GLASGOW, Scotland — The head of the United Nations warned leaders at the global climate summit in Glasgow that “we digging our own graves” by burning fossil fuels and destroying the environment.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the ceremonial opening of the two-week talks Monday that believing recent announcements by governments could turn the tide on climate change were “an illusion,” not least because there are serious questions many countries’ pledges.

“As we open this much anticipated climate conference, we are still heading for climate disaster,” he said.

Guterres urged major economic powers, including emerging nations like China, to “go the extra mile” because they contribute the lion’s share of global greenhouse gas emissions.

He also criticized a confusion over emissions reductions targets, and announced the creation of a new group of experts to propose “clear standards” for measuring commitments from businesses and other non-state actors.

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MOSCOW — The Kremlin says that Moscow remains fully committed to global efforts on controlling climate change even though Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t attend the U.N. climate conference this week.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the format of the conference in Glasgow wouldn’t allow the Russian president to address the gathering via video link. But he added that Putin will record a video address to be delivered to a forest and land use conference which is part of the U.N. climate conference.

Peskov told reporters Monday that Russia fully shares global climate efforts and will stick to its goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The U.S. and the EU have prodded Moscow to set a more ambitious goal and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

Peskov charged that Russia is already ahead of some Western European countries regarding the share of low-carbon power generation sources. The Kremlin spokesman also emphasized the need to pay special attention to the needs of developing countries while mapping global climate efforts and consider their low emissions in the past.

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GLASGOW, Scotland — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has opened a global climate summit saying the world is strapped to a “doomsday device.”

Johnson likened the Earth’s position to that of fictional secret agent James Bond strapped to a doomsday device that will destroy the planet and trying to work out how to defuse it.

He told leaders “we are in roughly the same position” and that only now the “ticking doomsday device” is real and not a movie.

He was kicking off the world leaders summit portion of a U.N. climate conference aimed at getting an agreement to curb carbon emissions fast enough to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) below pre-industrial levels.

Britain’s leader struck a gloomy note on the eve of the conference after Group of 20 leaders made only modest climate commitments at their summit in Rome.

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GLASGOW, Scotland — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was warmly greeted by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he arrived Monday for the ceremonial opening of this year’s global climate summit.

Modi’s speech was hotly anticipated by delegates hoping to hear new plans for how India, the world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will reduce emissions going forward.

Leaders from major emerging economies including China, Russia and Brazil weren’t attending the summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Their absence was interpreted as blow to international efforts to spur more ambitious action against global warming at the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 meeting.

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GLASGOW, Scotland — President Joe Biden has arrived at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow for two days of meetings with world leaders meant to spur action on controlling climate change.

Biden is among leaders who are set to address the gathering on Monday. He flew into Scotland from Rome, where he attended a Group of 20 nations summit that wrapped on Sunday.

Biden will also attend some side events at the conference and a reception Monday evening with leaders and other guests invited by the host, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The U.S. is seeking to push other nations to make bold commitments on curbing the emissions that are blamed for the earth’s warming while Biden’s domestic climate plan awaits a vote in the U.S. Congress after multiple delays.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Sweden’s prime minister says “it’s a shame” that rich countries haven’t been successful in meeting a pledge by rich countries of $100 billion a year until 2025 to help poorer nations fight climate change.

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told a news conference in Glasgow at the COP26 summit that “it is obvious that there will be tough negotiations.”

He was quoted as saying by Swedish news agency TT that “more needs to be done to ensure that the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees can be achieved. ”

Lofven added that “the science is very clear. We must speed up the implementation of the Paris Agreement.” He also still sees positive signals, and singled out, among other things, the Group of 20’s agreement over the weekend to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees as an example.

He said “it is possible to move forward only if the political will exists and if the political will exists in Glasgow, it is possible to achieve result.”

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GLASGOW, Scotland — Glasgow’s trash collectors have gone on strike as world leaders arrived in the city to discuss climate action. The move has added to headaches for the COP26 host city.

Garbage collectors and street cleaners across Glasgow walked out on strike at a minute past midnight Monday after talks on pay between their union and the city council broke down.

The GMB union said the strikes will likely last throughout the first full week of the 12-day U.N. conference. More than 120 world leaders are coming to Glasgow along with thousands of diplomats, campaigners, researchers and journalists.

The strike could see garbage pile up in the streets and is the latest glitch for the summit’s Scottish host. Glasgow is living up to its reputation as one of Britain’s rainiest cities. And delegates have faced long waits that have sometimes stretched into hours to get into the conference venue.

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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he decided to miss out on the COP26 climate summit and canceled his trip to Glasgow over a dispute on “protocol standards.”

Erdogan flew back to Turkey early Monday, instead of heading to Glasgow after attending a G-20 summit in Rome. Turkish media reports said Erdogan decided to skip COP26, due to restrictions that were placed on the size of his delegation and on the number of their vehicles.

“There were security protocol standards that we requested … These were protocols standards that were always applied to us on all our international visits. However, we were told at the last moment that these could not be met,” Erdogan told a group of reporters on his return to Istanbul from Rome.

He maintained that the protocol standards Turkey had requested had been granted “to another country.” He didn’t elaborate.

“Our demands were not met, so we gave up on going to Glasgow,” Erdogan said. “In the end, the issue was not just about our own security, it was about the reputation of our country. We are responsible for protecting the reputation of our nation.”

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark prime minister says the country and several others, including the United States, Britain and the Marshall Islands, are calling on the International Maritime Organization to contribute to climate action by adopting “a climate-neutral 2050 target as well as ambitious intermediary targets in 2030 and 2040.”

It sends “a clear signal to our partners in the public and private sectors around the world that a greener future for shipping is both necessary but also possible. It is time to act to ensure a greener future,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement Monday.

“Climate-neutral shipping plays a crucial role in achieving the international climate goals and has the potential to support a massive upscaling of the use of renewable energy for the use of green fuels, which are central to the necessary energy transition also in emerging economies and developing countries,” she said.

Frederiksen will present the initiative later Monday at COP26 in Glasgow together with the U.S. special climate envoy, John Kerry, and the Marshall Islands’ head of delegation at COP26, Bruce Bilimon.

There they will launch a joint statement calling for shipping to be climate neutral by 2050 and stressing the importance of political action now.

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GLASGOW, Scotland — Scores of world leaders are being welcomed to Glasgow for a climate conference amid gloom over the meeting’s chances of agreeing to new measures to limit global warming.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed leaders one by one with elbow bumps and smiles Monday morning in front of a giant planet Earth on a blue background. The greetings were due to go on for hours, since more than 120 leaders are coming to Glasgow for the first two days of the 12-day summit.

Delegates, observers and journalists had a less welcoming experience as they arrived at the huge conference venue beside the River Clyde in Glasgow. Thousands lined up in a chilly wind to get through a bottleneck at the entrance to the venue, long before security. Some already turned back and decided to work from their hotels amid concern they won’t make it in on time for negotiating meetings.

Johnson issued a stark warning on the eve of the conference, saying it is the last chance to keep alive the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. He said that “if Glasgow fails then the whole thing fails.”

— This item has been corrected to show that leaders were greeted with elbow bumps, not fist bumps.

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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided not to travel to Glasgow to attend the COP26 climate conference and flew straight back to Turkey from the Group of 20 summit in Rome.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said Erdogan’s plane landed in Istanbul early Monday.

Erdogan’s office didn’t provide an explanation for the change of plans. Turkish media reports said however, that the Turkish president decided to cancel his trip to Glasgow over security concerns, following restrictions that would be imposed on the size of the Turkish delegation as well as on the number of their motorised vehicles.

Turkey’s parliament ratified the Paris climate agreement last month after holding off for years as it sought to be reclassified as a developing country rather than a developed country.

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GLASGOW, Scotland — More than 130 world leaders will grab center stage Monday and Tuesday in international climate negotiations in Glasgow.

From U.S. President Joe Biden to Seychelles President Wavel Ramkalawan, more than half of the planet’s heads of state and government will kick off two weeks of climate talks.

It’s designed to set the talks in the right direction with big ideas and give-and-take and then leave the negotiations over how to slow intensifying global warming to government officials.

A former U.N. climate chief says that leaders-first process was one of the keys to the 2015 Paris agreement working.