“We still hold on with some parts of our minds to the infantile belief that the world was made for our satisfaction and our enjoyment,†he said. “And we combine this narcissism with an assumption of our own immortality.”
“We think someone else is going to fix the problem, because that’s what someone else has always done,†he added. “We are destroying our habitats, over and over again, with the inductive reasoning that we have gotten away with so far, and as a result, we will get away with it again.
“My friends, humanity’s adolescence is coming to an end and must come to an end.”
World leaders must arrive in Scotland ready to make the necessary commitments, he said. It is already “too late” to stop rising global temperatures, but the world can still “hold back this growth” at 1.5 degrees Celsius.
To avoid crossing that threshold, “we must collectively commit to achieving carbon neutrality, net zero, by mid-century,” Johnson said on Wednesday. “We need all countries, all of you, to commit to very substantial reductions by 2030.”
The prime minister on Monday held a closed-door meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres and other world leaders to urge countries to pledge funds to help developing countries move away from fossil fuels.
In a meeting with Biden on Tuesday, Johnson hailed the US president’s speech as “the most important thing today.”
