Politicians from all over the world, currently gathered in Glasgow for COP26, seem to be calling on divine powers rather than leveraging their respective legislative systems to help save the planet.

“God bless you all, and may God save the planet.”

It may sound like a line from a Hollywood blockbuster, but it’s with these words that the US President, Joe Biden, concluded a speech at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Monday, Nov 1.

Since COP26 got underway, Sunday, Oct 31, speeches, statements and remarks on finding solutions to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been coming thick and fast.

And some have stood out for their originality, like the words of President Biden, who seemingly calls on God for a helping hand.

The name’s Johnson, Boris Johnson

But the US President wasn’t alone in making an impression at COP26. The UK’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, opened the conference with a speech alluding to the legendary spy 007: “[…] we are in roughly the same position, my fellow global leaders, as James Bond today, except that the tragedy is that this is not a movie, and the doomsday device is real, and the clock is ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and turbines and furnaces and engines, with which we are pumping carbon into the air faster and faster,” he said, underscoring the urgent need for action by drawing on superhero imagery from the collective imagination.

This statement follows a scene that took place a few days earlier in Rome, during the G20 summit. The leaders of these developed countries were photographed in front of the Trevi Fountain, throwing a coin into the water, “for good luck fighting the climate emergency,” as the Portuguese author, Bruno Maçaes, stated in a tweet.

But when considering the pollution generated merely by world leaders traveling to this climate conference, you could wonder whether even God himself is in a position to save anything at all.

“High-Flying Hypocrites”

Behind this discourse of urgency – “It’s one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock,” said Boris Johnson in his Glasgow speech – the world’s great leaders are full of contradictions. Indeed, the UK Prime Minister used a private jet to travel the 600 kilometres separating the Scottish city from London.

This was due to “significant time constraints,” said a government spokesperson, to justify the choice.

For his part, Joe Biden flew to Europe aboard Air Force One. So far, so unexceptional — except that the US President also brought along three other presidential planes, a helicopter, about twenty cars and a gas-guzzling armored vehicle known as “The Beast.”

And that’s without mentioning Jeff Bezos’ visit to COP26 earlier in the week (also on a private jet). His company Amazon generated 60.64 million tonnes of CO2 in 2020.

That’s the equivalent of 60 million round trips from Paris to New York by plane. Indeed, many people didn’t exactly appreciate the CEO flying in on a private jet to tell the world how to fight global warming. The message seemed somewhat hard to swallow.

“High-Flying Hypocrites” read a Scottish Daily Mail headline denouncing the carbon footprint of this global meeting. According to the Sunday Mail, nearly 400 jets will fly to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Prestwick during COP26.

The arrival of these private planes – the most CO2-emitting means of transport in the world – will produce about 13,000 tonnes of CO2, equivalent to the carbon emissions of 1,600 Scots in one year, according to the Daily Record.

Data compiled by the FT, and quoted in the Independent, suggests that previous COP summits have produced around 53,000 tonnes of CO2 on average, with 45,000 from air travel alone.

In comparison, the average annual carbon footprint of an individual in France was 11 tonnes in 2018.