Rishi Sunak deserves one of those ‘climate champion’ badges they hand out at primary schools. Why? Because he is not going to fly to the COP27 summit in Egypt – thereby saving 1.65 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to the World Land Trust’s carbon calculator. So what if Ed Miliband thinks it is a failure of leadership? There is no point in any UK Prime Minister travelling to any more of these summits when the world’s largest carbon emitters have made it perfectly plain that they have no intention of copying Britain’s example. They will not be putting themselves under legal commitment to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050 or any other hard date.
Xi Jinping, whose country is responsible for a third of the world’s emissions, won’t be going. Joe Biden will be there to earn his brownie points, but we know what to expect after he turned up last year in Air Force One, took a cavalcade of 21 vehicles from Edinburgh airport and then appeared to fall asleep during the conference.
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