Prime Minister Boris Johnson will fly back to London from Glasgow rather than taking the train, Downing Street said Monday hours after he chided world leaders for not doing more on climate change, IgbereTV reports.
Aviation — especially the private kind — is a bete noire of the environmental lobby as it emits vastly more carbon per passenger than other forms of transport.
Hundreds of campaigners attending the COP26 conference in Scotland’s biggest city have come up from London by train, although the mainline to Glasgow was hit by lengthy storm-related delays Sunday.
Johnson flew in to COP26 late Sunday from Rome, where he was attending a weekend G20 summit, aboard a chartered Airbus plane painted in a patriotic UK livery.
He will use the same jet to return to London on Tuesday, his office said, after opening a two-day COP26 summit by warning that future generations “will not forgive us” if leaders fail to act.
“It’s important that the prime minister is able to move around the country and we face significant time constraints,” Johnson’s spokesman told reporters in Glasgow.
London is 60-90 minutes from Glasgow by plane on average, while the train journey can take more than five hours
