In a United Nations address, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson compared humanity to a petulant 16-year-old — “just old enough to get ourselves into serious trouble”–and that humankind must stop trashing the planet and address climate change, the Associated Press reports.
“We have come to that fateful age when we know roughly how to drive and we know how to unlock the drinks cabinet and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal,” Johnson said. “We believe that someone else will clear up the mess we make, because that is what someone else has always done,” he added. “We trash our habitats again and again with the inductive reasoning that we have got away with it so far, and therefore we will get away with it again.”
Johnson will host a UN climate meeting in Glasgow, Scotland in November when leaders will review the climate crisis worldwide. Calling the United Kingdom “the Saudi Arabia of wind,” Johnson has led the effort in his nation to have net zero carbon emissions by 2050.