Exclusive: Boris Johnson talks up COP26 climate deals but stumbles on Attenborough mask controversy

CNN

By Luke McGee, Alicia Lloyd and Ben Kirby, CNN

Boris Johnson struggled to explain his decision not to wear a mask while sitting next to 95-year-old environmentalist David Attenborough as he tried to put a positive spin on this week’s COP26 climate summit, in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Speaking to CNN on the sidelines of talks in Glasgow, the British Prime Minister struck a somber tone on the state of the climate emergency, saying “I think you’ve got to be gloom and doom until we fix this thing.”

Johnson hailed some of the early agreements reached at the summit, including a pact to reduce deforestation, but said the world had to be humbled in the face of the “huge” climate crisis. He also said his government was committing to reducing its reliance on coal, despite the prospect of a controversial new mine opening in northwest England.

“I don’t want more coal, and our government doesn’t want more coal. We’ll do what we’re legally able to do,” Johnson said.

Johnson had sparked outrage on the first day of the summit when he was pictured without a mask next to veteran broadcaster and environmental campaigner Attenborough.

Asked about the controversy, Johnson stumbled before saying: “I’ve been wearing masks in confined spaces with people I don’t normally talk to … it’s up to people to take a judgment whether they’re at a reasonable distance from someone … that’s the approach we take.”

Johnson also sought to defend his government’s widely-criticized handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and said he did not plan to bring in further measures, including mandating the wearing of masks, despite a recent rise in cases and deaths in the UK.

The Prime Minister said that while he was “watching the data all the time” and that we “have to remain humble in the face of the nature of what the disease can do,” he believed that at the moment “we don’t see any reasons to deviate the plan that we’re on.”

He went on to hail the UK’s vaccine rollout, saying that the UK was “starting to deal with Covid as part of our lives.”

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