A smallpiper gave world leaders a very Scottish welcome to the COP26 crunch climate change summit in Glasgow today as they gathered amid warnings over taking urgent action to limit global warming.
Brìghde Chaimbeul, who is from Sleat on the Isle of Skye, entertained politicians and Royal Family members at the Scottish Event Campus with her own arrangement of the traditional melodies An Léimras and Harris Dance.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Prince Charles and Camilla all watched as Miss Chaimbeul played – before a video of space-themed images with a voiceover from physicist Brian Cox who said the world is 'inconceivably valuable'.
Mr Johnson later warned world leaders, including US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that the longer they fail to tackle climate, the higher the cost when they are forced 'by catastrophe' to act.
Scottish smallpiper Brìghde Chaimbeul, who is from Sleat on the Isle of Skye, opened the COP26 summit in Glasgow today
Chorley-born writer Yrsa Daley-Ward presents a poem at the Cop26 opening ceremony in Glasgow this afternoon
Mr Cox said: 'It's possible that there's only one civilisation in the milky way galaxy. There may have only ever been one, and there may only ever be one - and that's us. We may be the first and last - that's important. If you're looking for a hint as to how we should behave politically, towards each other, towards our planet, then this idea matters.
'Imagine that the earth is the only place in a galaxy where intelligent life exists. The only place where collections of atoms as old as time have come together into improbable patterns that can think and feel and bring meaning to an otherwise meaningless universe.
'How should we behave? Surely notwithstanding the fact that we're tiny, fragile things, on a mote of dust orbiting around one star amongst 400billion. We must consider ourselves and our world to be inconceivably valuable.'
After the video, Chorley-born writer Yrsa Daley-Ward then presented a poem, which opened with her saying: 'Nothing will be saved without you. It is important to begin with the fact. This is your invitation to lead with light.
'You were born to be creators of the ground entrusted. Yesterday's beneficiaries; inheritors of land, air, time - now is all we have left, holding the world in our hands, with the most inconvenient truth to honour the earth, land, sky.
World leaders gathered today at the crunch climate summit in Glasgow amid warnings that they must take urgent action
The Prince of Wales addressed world leaders at the Cop26 global climate summit in Glasgow today and said: 'The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us just how devastating a global cross-border threat can be'
'Our day is older than it used to be, but not yet gone. The day is dimming and still not done. Come, leading lights. We were born to be creators of the possible future. The truth will not leave without you, heavy though it may be.'
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned world leaders that the longer they fail to tackle climate, the higher the cost when they are forced 'by catastrophe' to act.
Addressing world leaders including US President Joe Biden, India's Narendra Modi and German chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Johnson said the world was in roughly the same position as James Bond as he tries to deactivate a doomsday advice in his films.
But he said: 'The tragedy is this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real.
'The clock is ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and furnaces and engines with which we are pumping carbon into the air faster and faster... and quilting the earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2, raising the temperature of the planet with a speed and abruptness that is entirely man made.'
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of COP26 in Glasgow this morning
He warned of the dangers of rising temperatures, jeopardising food supplies for hundreds of millions of people, more wildfires and eventually the loss of whole cities such as Miami, Alexandria and Shanghai.
'The longer we fail to act and the worse it gets and the higher the price when we are forced by catastrophe to act,' he said.
Coining a phrase from activist Greta Thunberg, he warned that the promises to limit global temperature rises under the Paris Agreement would be 'nothing but blah blah blah' and the world's anger would be uncontainable unless Cop26 was the moment they got real about climate change.
He warned that future generations would not forgive them if they did not act - and would be right to do so.
Channelling his hero Sir Winston Churchill, Mr Johnson said that: 'While Cop26 would not be the end of climate change, it can and it must mark the beginning of the end.'
Mr Johnson took to the stage to make his speech after the delegates watched a performance by Skye piper Brighde Chaimbeul, a video narrated by Brian Cox and a poem by Yrsa Daley-Ward composed for Cop26.
Around 120 heads of state and government are attending the world leaders' summit at the start of the Cop26 talks, where countries are under pressure to increase action in the next decade to tackle dangerous warming.
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In an opening speech, Mr Johnson then warned of the dangers of rising temperatures. He said: 'Four degrees and we say goodbye to whole cities, Miami, Alexandria, Shanghai, all lost beneath the waves.
'The longer we fail to act and the worse it gets and the higher the price when we are forced by catastrophe to act.'
He then added that world leaders are 'in roughly the same position' as James Bond. Welcoming them to the city, Mr Johnson said the fictional spy was Scotland's 'most globally famous fictional son'.
Bond, he said, 'generally comes to the climax of his highly lucrative films strapped to a doomsday device, desperately trying to work out which coloured wire to pull to turn it off, while a red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation that will end human life as we know it'.
He added: 'We are in roughly the same position, my fellow global leaders, as James Bond today - except that the tragedy is this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real.
'The clock is ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and furnaces and engines with which we are pumping carbon into the air faster and faster... and quilting the earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2, raising the temperature of the planet with a speed and abruptness that is entirely man made.'
Mr Johnson also said there is a duty to find the funds pledged at a previous climate summit Paris. He told Cop26: 'We cannot and will not succeed by government spending alone.
'We in this room could deploy hundreds of billions, no question. But the market has hundreds of trillions and the task now is to work together to help our friends to decarbonise.'
He said such a move would help de-risk key projects to allow private sector money to be brought in.
Mr Johnson added: 'In just the same way that it was the private sector that enabled the UK to end our on dependence on coal and become the Saudi Arabia of wind.'
And Mr Johnson urged world leaders not to 'fluff our lines', warning that younger generations will 'not forgive us'. He said: 'The children who will judge us are children not yet born, and their children.
'We are now coming centre stage before a vast and uncountable audience of posterity and we must not fluff our lines or miss our cue.
'Because if we fail, they will not forgive us - they will know that Glasgow was the historic turning point when history failed to turn.
'They will judge us with bitterness and with a resentment that eclipses any of the climate activists of today and they will be right. Cop26 will not and cannot be the end of the story on climate change.'
He also said that Cop26 must mark the beginning of the end of climate change.
Addressing the opening of the summit, the Prime Minster said: 'If summits alone solve climate change then we wouldn't have needed 25 previous Cop summits to get where we are today. But while Cop26 will not be the end of climate change it can and it must mark the beginning of the end.'
He added: 'In the years since Paris the world has slowly and with great effort and pain built a lifeboat for humanity and now is the time to give that lifeboat a mighty shove into the water like some great liner rolling down the slipways of the Clyde.
'Take a sexton sighting on 1.5 degrees and set off on a journey to a cleaner greener future.'
Mr Johnson concluded his speech by saying it must mark
