Alex Phillips: COP26 a load of hot air without China or Russia

We need to talk about COP26 Prepare to hear little other than Climate Change over the next few days as the world gears up for the UN global summit, COP26, right here in the UK.

There will be pointless ice sculptures ludicrously shipped in on emissions-vomiting freightliners to ironically demonstrate the pressing urgency of global warming, more dead-eyed activists than you could glue to the entire length of the M1 and the leaders of everywhere from Trudeau’s Principality of Woke to Nigeria’s President Buhari - quite a feat considering half the population of the massive African nation believe him to be dead.

All of them will be jostling for position to either opine about their nation’s woes and virtue signal to the world or get sharp elbowed about clinging on to their coal fired power stations.

Everyone will analyse who’s in the cool crowd. Expect Emmanuel Macron to cling to Joe Biden’s coattails like his personal valet. And then who is, to coin an overused term of 2021 - problematic, with the usual characters from Prime Minister Modi of India to President Erdogan of Turkey to all be put in the naughty corner by the world’s media who will simultaneously hold up the scowling little teenager from Sweden like the modern day Magi. But it’s the no-shows at the conference in Glasgow that speak the loudest.

Because as we will all be mithered and nagged to turn vegetarian, tear out our gas boilers, buy penny-farthings and sterilise our children, our vainglorious stoical efforts to rival the ascetic lifestyle of a Tibetan Monk will be painfully eclipsed by the construction of another megafactory in Xingtai.

But if we are in a Climate Emergency, and Dear Viewer, the UK is the only big economy to put stringent net zero targets into legislation, then we are all about to be sucked into one of the most radical shake ups in human existence, while Putin still war-games over gas supplies to Germany, China feigns faux eco-interest while planning global manufacturing domination and the wind doesn’t blow, meaning your house will cost ten quid a second to heat this winter.

It’s hard to adapt and change our own lifestyle habits when the threat feels remote and existential, and the apocalyptic scenes of collapsing icecaps, raging infernos and Biblical floods are set to strike once you’ve shuffled off your mortal coil. But adapt we must. Yet who should be shouldering the greatest burden?

There is the geopolitical game of chess to be played with oil rich Emiratis, Moscovite malevolence and Chinese Communist power play, but also a seemingly insurmountable mountain to climb at home if we are to make up for decades of lost time tinkering around the edges with turbines while allowing six major nuclear power plant projects to collapse, leaving us woefully out of step while proclaiming to lead the world with our eco-credentials. So what does the future have in store? And will it all be worth it?

Or will all the talk of emissions simply be a load of hot air. The day of reckoning awaits. Today, we really need to talk about Cop 26.