‘Last Call’ for World Leaders
Activists dressed as world leaders at the Glasgow Canal. Source Francesco Bonfanti.
Climate change activists have urged world leaders not to let COP26 negotiations fail as the conference enters its second week.
The Glasgow Actions Team, alongside activists from Green New Deal Rising, and the COP26 Coalition, floated a barge on the Glasgow Canal with activists dressed as world leaders such as Boris Johnson and Joe Biden.
Fatima Ibrahim, co-director of Green New Deal Rising, said: “We’re in the Forth and Clyde canal with a sinking barge, sending a message to world leaders that this is the last call to deliver ambitious and necessary action on climate change - in the same way around the pubs in Glasgow where you’d get a last call at eleven, we’re issuing a last call that this is their week to deliver.”
A video of Ibrahim confronting Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, about the UK government continuing to subsidise the fossil fuel industry, went viral on Twitter last week. Despite being removed from the Chancellor’s speech, Ibrahim is steadfast in her determination to make world leaders listen.
Ibrahim said: “We’ll force them to listen. Rishi Sunak is not someone who has willingly engaged with the public or young people, but we find him in the corridors, we find him wherever he is and put the questions to him. I think it’s a signal that he didn’t answer our question and then was so scared of us that he asked for us to be removed from his speech.
“I think politicians aren’t used to looking into the eyes of the futures they are destroying.”
Francis Brewer, spokesperson for the COP26 Coalition, also feels that politicians are ignoring the voices of ordinary people.
“I think the voices of normal people have been completely ignored at this conference; it’s not my interests or your interests being protected here. The largest delegations at COP26 is for the fossil fuel companies. We see that it’s their interests being protected here, not ours.
“It’s only if we put massive, drastic pressure on these government’s that they’re actually going to protect ours.
“This is COP26, there’s been twenty-five COPS before this and since that first conference there’s been more emissions than all of human history before that point. Every time we get pledges and then we get failure.
“What we need to do is hold the leader’s feet to the fire; we need to show them that we’re not going to stand for this – then we’ll get the action we need.”