On Monday 1st November, Boris Johnson addressed the World Leaders Summit Opening Ceremony at COP26 with a speech charged with the vocabulary of action. Particularly notable was his ironic quoting of Greta Thunberg, who earlier this year denounced the empty words of world leaders as mere ‘blah, blah, blah’. Johnson’s speech, designed to cement the UK’s global status as ‘climate leaders’, may have attempted to combat Thunberg’s accusations, but in fact, demonstrated the exact discrepancy between words and actions that she and others criticise. Johnson is all about quick, digestible slogans such as ‘levelling up’ or ‘build back better’ which create visions of great progress but often fail to live up to them. While his COP26 speech was carefully packed with buzzwords co-opted from the climate justice movement, it is obvious that Johnson has neither truly digested nor embraced the implications that come with these terms.

Johnson’s speech does a very good job of sounding committed to fighting the climate crisis. It combines urgency, big promises and the typical Johnsonian wit, admitting that “not all of us necessarily look like James Bond”. He mentions ‘revolution’ twice, a term that has been increasingly co-opted into mainstream politics, as in Labour’s 2019 Manifesto of ”A Green Industrial Revolution”. Johnson’s speech is packed full of these ‘woke’ buzzwords: ‘tragedy’, ‘get real’, ‘spiritually uplifting and beautiful’, which represent his attempt to co-opt the progressiveness and popularity of the climate movement while ignoring its ideology.

“It combines urgency, big promises and the typical Johnsonian wit, admitting that “not all of us necessarily look like James Bond”

Midway through his speech, Johnson highlights “the developed world[’s] […] special responsibility to help everybody else” in the “green industrial revolution”, a proclamation that superficially seems to align with the climate justice movement. The movement is centred around an ideology that the climate crisis cannot just be stopped through environmental solutions but requires overturning entire systems: ending modern slavery, the refugee crisis and all forms of institutional oppression. To these climate activists, the fact that the richest 1% were responsible for double the carbon emissions of the poorest 50% from 1990-2015 highlights how we need to focus on changing systems in the global north. Johnson takes the overarching thread of this ideology, that responsibility for tackling the climate crisis lies mainly with wealthier nations, and dresses it up in a way that suits him, shifting attention away from economic practices within the UK.

While Johnson does not call for the same radical overhaul of economic and political systems that climate activists champion, beneath his polished words it is difficult to detect what he actually does want. Even at COP26, it is important to remember that his primary concern remains to protect the economy through Conservative policies. Ultimately, he is trying to do as much as possible to be seen as addressing the climate crisis, without truly embracing radical change.

“Ultimately, he is trying to do as much as possible to be seen as addressing the climate crisis, without truly embracing radical change”

Johnson, and other world leaders, use the language and ideas of the climate justice movement to pander to the ‘woke’ masses but refuse to actually listen to the demands of the movement. This hypocrisy does not go unnoticed by activists.

The ongoing dialogue between Johnson and Thunberg is just one example of this. After Johnson warned that “it’s vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive politically correct green act of bunny-hugging”, Thunberg changed her Twitter bio to “Bunny hugger”. At the Youth4Climate conference in September, Thunberg declared that “This is not about some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging, or blah, blah, blah. Build back better, blah, blah, blah.” By directly quoting Johnson’s April speech and his infamous slogan, Thunberg emphasised the emptiness of his characteristic flashy rhetoric.

In his speech at COP26, Johnson attempts to foster faux camaraderie between the government and the climate justice movement. When he invokes Greta Thunberg’s criticism of his empty words, noting that “and all those promises will be nothing but blah blah blah — to coin a phrase”, his wry tone completely brushes aside the indignation of her accusations.

Activists on the ground at COP26 continue to resist the prime minister’s smooth words. On BBC Newsnight on Monday, Allegra Stratton, a COP26 spokeswoman, was quick to tell activist Mikaela Loach that “The PM would completely agree with you”. However, Loach was quick to combat this by asking “So would Boris Johnson say that we should stop the Cambo oil field and not be approving any new oil and gas-?” Before Loach could finish she was interrupted by Stratton’s vigorous determination to be seen as concurring with her despite ignoring her point: instead merely repeating that “what I was going to say is the Prime Minister completely agreed with you”. As much as Johnson and his team may claim commonality with activists, as much as his promising words allude to equal futures, global leaders and the climate justice movement continue to have vitally different underlying agendas.

It is precisely because COP26 is a source of hope that it is also a moment where critical scrutiny of world leaders, and their language, is of such vital importance. Parroting the language of climate justice activists is not the same as listening to their demands. Throughout his speech, Johnson insists that ’we can’ avert the climate crisis, but it is now a question of if he and other world leaders will, or whether their promising words will again be all we are given. We’ll be watching.