World leaders are playing a deadly game with the planet, protesters have warned as they urged those gathered at the COP26 summit in Glasgow to do more to stop climate change.
Andrew Nazdin, director of the Glasgow Actions Team, demanded increased effort and said: “World leaders need to agree a plan to keep warming well below 1.5 degrees Celsius and put up money to fund a just transition across the global south.”
To make their point, campaigners dressed as US President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders staged a Squid Game-themed demonstration on Tuesday.
Squid Game, the hit Netflix survival drama, follows a heavily indebted gambler who is competing against hundreds of others in a series of children’s games as they attempt to win a huge payout. However, losing results in a contestant’s death.
Malcolm White, of the Glasgow Actions Team, who was dressed as the Prime Minister, was taking part in the demonstration opposite the Scottish Event Campus (SEC), where global leaders are trying to thrash out vital agreements.
“We’re here playing the Squid Game in order to highlight that the climate leaders are playing games with the planet,” said the 34-year-old.
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“They’re here, they’re using lots of rhetoric, but they’re not actually, so far, engaging with the discussion process at the level which we think is in keeping with the climate crisis we are all facing.”
The “leaders” played climate hopscotch and tug-of-war, kicked around an inflatable world, and rolled dice.
At one point, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden could be seen tussling with an inflatable Earth as boilersuit-clad protesters watched on in front of a sign that urged them to “stop playing climate games”.
Fatima Ibrahim, co-founder of the Green New Deal Rising movement, said the protesters were demanding “world leaders take real action on the climate issue”.
The 28-year-old said: “Yesterday we saw a bunch of rhetoric and some big promises, but they are not delivering on their promises.
“Climate change does not react to rhetoric, it does not react to promises, it reacts to action.
“What we want is for world leaders to go home, put an end to all new fossil fuel infrastructure, and put a real investment in the green economy, and deliver green jobs for millions of ordinary working people who need a stake in the transition.”
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Ms Ibrahim said the COP26 conference was the starting point for taking action and that, when leaders go back to their home countries, they must deliver.
“We need to make sure any promises that are made in these two weeks are things that we force our governments to deliver on and that’s going to take public mobilisation,” she added.
“It’s going to take boots on the ground, out on the streets, every day, campaigning.”
Chris Venables, the head of politics at the Green Alliance, said world leaders should take the climate crisis more seriously. “I think often these events will feel like a circus and they can feel like a game, but obviously it’s actually about the lives of millions of people across the world and indeed here in the UK,” added the 32-year-old, who also called on leaders to keep the target of a 1.5C maximum warming limit on the table.
Meanwhile, climate activists from Extinction Rebellion Scotland and other groups staged an “impromptu” demonstration outside the SEC campus where COP26 delegates are meeting.
Campaigners had earlier taken part in a “Trillion Dollar Bash” protest outside the offices of JP Morgan in Glasgow’s Waterloo Street, where they called out the bank’s continued profits from, and investment in, fossil fuel projects. They then marched on the main site of the summit on the banks of the River Clyde, although they were turned back by police blocking entry.
One Extinction Rebellion campaigner, Luca Trivellone, 27, from Italy, said: “We all know COP26 has already failed before it even started.
“We are expecting emissions to rise instead of net zero by 2030. We are never going to get there.”
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The demonstration came ahead of a larger march on Wednesday.
It has been planned by Extinction Rebellion, other environmental groups and members of the public.
Extinction Rebellion activist Helen Smith, 34, from Glasgow, who wants to attend, said: “I’m so tired of the number of companies profiting from a disingenuous perception of themselves as ‘ethical’ or ‘green’ when the reality is totally the opposite.”
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