UN chief urges world leaders to declare climate emergency

That is why today, I call on all world leaders to declare a state of climate emergency in their countries until carbon neutrality is achieved.

Last year, Ireland became the second country in the world to declare a climate and biodiversity emergency.

The Fianna Fáil amendment to declare an emergency, which was introduced in connection with an Oireachtas report on Climate Change, was accepted by both sides of the Dáil without a vote.

Greta Thunberg, 16-year-old climate change activist tweeted to say It was “big news from Ireland” at the time.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said today at the climate summit that a traumatic pandemic year was ending in hopes that vaccines would go live.

“My message to all of you is that together, we can use scientific advances to protect our planet, our biosphere against a much worse challenge, much more destructive, even than the coronavirus pandemic,” he said.

For its part, Britain was acting on the climate not because it was a nation of “mung bean-eating green freaks” but because scientific progress would allow the creation of “millions” of green jobs, Johnson added.

Spaces to speak were given to countries that presented the most ambitious plans to accelerate their Paris promises.

These include Honduras and Guatemala, which were hit last month by a pair of monster hurricanes, as well as India, which is battling increasingly erratic weather patterns and air pollution.

But the major economies, including Australia, Brazil and South Africa, are absent.

With information from Orla Dwyer