(Glasgow) After calling for efforts against global warming at COP26, the British Prime Minister will return to London by plane, a means of transport much more polluting than the train, pushing Downing Street to justify himself on Monday.
Coming directly from the G20 meeting in Rome on Sunday, the conservative leader had joined Scotland, where a UN conference is being held until November 12, which is crucial for the future of the planet, on board the official Airbus of the government, in the colors of the Union Jack.
He will use the same device to return to London on Tuesday, Downing Street said, after warning that if COP26 fails to step up efforts to limit global warming, “our children […] will not forgive us ”.
“It is important that the Prime Minister can travel in the country and we face significant time constraints”, justified the spokesman for Boris Johnson, questioned by journalists in Glasgow. “The fuel we use is sustainable and emissions offset as well,” he insisted.
Glasgow, Scotland’s most populous city, is a full hour’s flight from London, but the journey can take over five hours by train.
Other leaders are also singled out for their environmentally unfriendly trips, firstly US President Joe Biden, whose convoy to the G20 in Rome totaled more than 80 vehicles, including his highly fuel-intensive official car, nicknamed “The Beast” ( ” The beast “).
“Boris Johnson rightly warns that the world is at ‘midnight to one’ in terms of climate change,” responded Mohamed Adow, director of the NGO Power Shift Africa, to AFP, who believes that the train would have therefore was more appropriate.
He recalled that the British government had this week lowered the tax on short flights, to the chagrin of environmentalists. “Maybe if the government used taxes on domestic flights to improve its rail infrastructure, low-carbon modes of transport would be easier, cheaper and more widely used.”
Aviation is in the crosshairs of conservationists. But many of those who had chosen the train to get to COP26 on Sunday had to fall back on this much more polluting mode of travel, due to a Sunday interruption in rail traffic between London and Glasgow following the fall of ‘a tree on a catenary.