I hope that COP 26 will be a 16thbirthday for humanity in which we choose to grow up,

We are awesome in our power to change thingsand awesome in our power to save ourselves,and in the next 40 days we must choose what kind of awesome we are going to be.

And our grandchildren will know that we are the culpritsand that we were warnedand they will know that it was this generation that came centre stageto speak and act on behalf of posterityand that we missed our cueand they will ask what kind of people we were to be so selfish and so short sighted.

Even in this feckless youth we have harnessed clean energy from wind and wave and sun.

My friends the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end.

We still cling with part of our minds to the infantile belief that the world was made for our gratification and pleasure and we combine this narcissism with an assumption of our own immortality.

We have come to that fateful age when we know roughly how to drive and we know howto unlock the drinks cabinet and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal.

If you imagine that million years as the lifespan of an individual human being –about eighty years –then we are now sweet 16.

Of our allotted lifespan of a million, humanity has been around for about 200,000.