Time running out to stop 'catastrophe', warns UK's climate chief

The UK government's climate chief Alok Sharma has warned that the world is "dangerously close" to running out of time to stop a climate change catastrophe.

Sharma, who is leadingCOP26, the climate summit hosted by the UK this year, said that the effects were already clear with floods, fires and heatwaves.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

"This is going to be the starkest warning yet that human behaviour is alarmingly accelerating global warming and this is why COP26 has to be the moment we get this right", Sharma said.

He added, "We can't afford to wait two years, five years, 10 years -– this is the moment," he added, explaining that unless nations "act now, we will, unfortunately, be out of time".

Meanwhile, a report recently revealed that Sharma has flown to 30 countries in the past seven months.

According to Daily Mail, Ashok Sharma was appointed as president of Cop26 in January and has visited countries including Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya since February.

He visited India in March, as well as Costa Rica, Qatar and the UAE. In April, he saw trips to the Far East, before he travelled to Bangladesh in June.

Not all of the 30 known journeys were return flights to the UK.

Sharma also visited a group of countries on one trip.

However, travel to and from all the destinations Sharma has visited would stretch to 200,000 miles.

The aviation industry produced 915m tonnes of CO2 in 2019, which is equivalent to 2 per cent of all human-made CO2 emissions.