The Queen has pulled out of Cop26, why not everyone else, too?

JANET STREET-PORTER: The Queen has sent her apologies to the farcical Cop26 conference, wouldn’t it better for the planet if everyone else did as well?

As usual, Her Majesty’s instincts are correct. When in doubt, pull out.

The Queen has sent ‘her regrets’ and won’t be attending Cop26 in Glasgow this weekend as she adheres to doctors’ advice and sticks to ‘light duties’ no further away than the drawing room.

I’m sure there’s nothing a 95-year-old would have enjoyed more than a round of cocktail parties with pompous heads-of-state fresh off their carbon-spewing private jets mouthing glib promises about how to save the planet.

Especially as Her Majesty has been a recycler all her life; still using those sad little Tupperware containers at breakfast time and steadfastly rotating her unique collection of couture hats and coats from half a century ago, much to the admiration of fashionistas now trying to embrace a new mantra of climate concern.

With only a few days to go before the giant kick-off, Cop26 is starting to look like a B-list event. 

Delegates from over a hundred and thirty countries are going to turn up in their thousands (mainly young and committed), but – without the Queen, will the A-listers and the power brokers be taking it seriously?

The citizens of Glasgow are in two minds about the whole shebang. With 30,000 visitors expected, if you own a sofa, or anything that resembles a bed, you’ll be making a fortune renting it. 

All hotels are fully booked, as are two cruise liners moored nearby and AirBnb rates are off the scale.

Currently, over two thousand attendees have nowhere to stay. Let’s just hope they don’t try napping on the street since Glasgow’s legendary rats were in the news this week for biting refuse workers. 

The Queen (pictured) has sent ‘her regrets’ and won’t be attending Cop26 in Glasgow this weekend as she adheres to doctors’ advice and sticks to ‘light duties’ no further away than the drawing room

JANET STREET-PORTER: The President of China, the world’s worse offender, is also unavailable, too busy running a country where a new coal fired power station was built every week last year – faster than the time it takes my council to empty the recycling bin (Pictured: President Xi Jingping of China)

General view of the Hydro, one of the venues for the UN COP26 in Glasgow 

The Armadillo, Exhibition Halls and SSE Hydro, on the Scottish Event Campus alongside the River Clyde in Glasgow, which will host Cop26

The SNP council leader acknowledged there had been ‘one or two incidents of very minor contact’ with rodents, claiming this was ‘normal’ in most cities.

Adding to this toxic mix, 1,500 council workers including refuse collectors, catering workers and janitors are going on strike for better pay for the duration of Cop, as are RMT train staff.

Scores of roads are closed along with five schools. Major museums and galleries have shut. Instead of using public transport to get to the city centre, delegates will be ferried by car, in specially designated traffic lanes, forcing ordinary commuters to cram into a single lane – producing more fumes, no doubt.

Cop, with it’s green devotees will be good news for vegan restaurants, bars and clubs. But is it going to benefit the environment?

In terms of PR, the lesser Royals will be flying the flag for Britain’s world-beating eco credentials. William and Kate and Charles and Camilla will be doing the rounds, but they got the E message years ago.

JANET STREET-PORTER: Delegates from over a hundred and thirty countries are going to turn up in their thousands (mainly young and committed), but – without the Queen, will the A-listers and the power brokers be taking it seriously?

Once, we laughed when Charles said he talked to his plants, now he’s revered for his concern about the environment. (Always easier when you have an army of servants to wash up, recycle, do your pressing, peel all those home grown vegetables, and book the Royal train).

We applauded Kate for recycling that beautiful one-off dress to the James Bond premiere – but don’t dwell on what it cost in the first place . . . and it wasn’t exactly made of recycled washing up bottles. 

On balance, the Royals will make a good show of sending messages of concern about the imminent danger to planet Earth. It’s a message that’s harder to sign up for if you’re an ordinary person who bought a diesel car when politicians told us to, who now faces a whopping surcharge of £12.50 a day to drive from your own doorstep in inner London.

And what about the Cop 26 guest list? The politicians and industrialists who carry the real power to change the rules or – to quote our leading climate change balladeer, Boris – stop everyone ‘swaddling our entire planet in a tea cosy of toxic stuff’.

Will Cop26 succeed where 25 other Cops seem to have failed? Levels of greenhouse gases have reached an all-time high, in spite of endless treaties, protocols, and targets all aimed at preventing exactly that happening.

In spite of decades of high profile get-togethers in luxury hotels over sumptuous banquets and endless toasts in Paris, Kyoto, Mexico, Copenhagen, Dubai and South Africa, we are still on course to fail to stop global warming in the very near future.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, even if current pledges to cut emissions drastically from the UK and 50 other countries are honoured, we still face a 2.7% temperature rise by 2100. 

Some countries, like Saudi Arabia and China claim they can only achieve zero emissions by 2060.

But here’s the reality – it’s all too little, too late. Scientists say we need to produce 55% less pollution by 2030, for any chance of reaching targets set at previous conferences.

Fat chance.

Cop 26 was supposed to be the head-bashing brain storming event that got world leaders to come to their senses. Boris is said to be concerned. No wonder. It has already failed.

Some of the biggest polluters on the planet have phoned in their excuses. Putin’s not turning up, claiming a surge in Covid infections back home.

The President of China, the world’s worse offender, is also unavailable, too busy running a country where a new coal fired power station was built every week last year – faster than the time it takes my council to empty the recycling bin.

Greta Thunberg will make a celebrity appearance and preach to the converted.

Scott Morrison, the hapless Prime Minister of Australia, the biggest exporter of fossil fuels in the G20, wasn’t going to come – saying he was ‘too busy’ but maybe he didn’t want to be accused of racking up unnecessary air miles.

Now Scott has done a U turn – possibly trying to justify his rash promise that the Aussies will have net zero carbon emissions by 2050 although he didn’t bother to attach a plan explaining how the country with the highest emissions per head in a top ranking country will reach this dream goal.

JANET STREET-PORTER: Some of the biggest polluters on the planet have phoned in their excuses. Putin’s not turning up, claiming a surge in Covid infections back home (Pictured: President Putin of Russia)

Boris – who wants to be the winner in any ‘race’ even if it’s over a cliff – has committed the UK to net zero emissions by 2050 (without any cost plan), and wants to phase out gas boilers by 2030.

There’s heaps of confusion about how to achieve this, mostly generated by Big Mouth himself. Telling school kids that recycling isn’t important and ‘doesn’t work’ didn’t help. Joking that – as humans and pets make up 97% of life on the planet compared to 3% wild animals – ‘we could feed some human beings to the animals’ was a bit lack-lustre too.

Not everything is a joke, Boris. Cop 26 uses old-world methods to search for a solution to a very current catastrophe. Using people-carriers, hotel rooms, conference centres and shaking hands (during Covid) to come to a ‘deal’ all sound positively Victorian.

Especially as it’s taking place in a city with the worse health outcomes in Scotland (and the rest of the UK), where men live four years less (on average) than anywhere else – just 74. 

Where the difference in life expectancy is as much as 14 years, depending on whether you live in a swanky middle class suburb or sub-standard tenements. If I was poor, and lived in Glasgow, I’d be at the end of my life.

So forgive me if I find the pomp and pretentiousness attached to Cop26 as about as relevant as those daft protestors gluing themselves to the A40 and any road they can reach with their Freedom Passes.

Cop26 is an environmental disaster in itself.

So I guess Glasgow, a lovely city to visit, but a filthy one, a city where drug abuse, ill health, poor housing and poverty are among the worse in the UK is about as an appropriate venue for this orgy of hypocritical virtue-signalling as you can get.

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