COP26: Boris Johnson compares climate change to James Bond - 'the Doomsday device is real'

Watch: Boris Johnson compares climate change to James Bond

Boris Johnson used his opening speech to compare the climate crisis to a James Bond movie.

In his speech at the opening ceremony for COP26 on Monday, the prime minister compared the global climate emergency as similar to a 007 film.

He used the metaphor of the spy wearing a bomb which is about to explode, but lamented that unfortunately climate change was a reality and not a movie.

"Welcome to Glasgow, and to Scotland, whose most globally famous fictional son is almost certainly a man called James Bond – who generally comes to the climax of his highly lucrative films strapped to a Doomsday device desperately trying to work out which coloured wire to pull to turn it off," he told world leaders from more than 100 countries.

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"A red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation that will end human life as we know it, and we are roughly the same position, my fellow global leaders, as James Bond today.

"Except that the tragedy is 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 engines with which we are pumping carbon into the air faster and faster, record output and quilting the earth in a suffocating blanket of CO2."

Johnson, known for his unusual metaphors – such as using Kermit the Frog in a comparison about "going green" – added: "Let us think about those beady eyes, watching us around the world."

Others delivering speeches as part of the opening ceremony included Prince Charles and Sir David Attenborough.

Leaders at COP26, which has been described as the last chance to save the planet, are expected to reiterate their commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement – which include hitting net zero by the middle of the century and keeping global warming below 2C, with a target of 1.5C.

However, doubt has been cast over the success of the conference after the leaders of both China and Russia announced they would not be attending; China is the world's biggest polluter, with Russia in the top five.

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