What I hope can be achieved at COP26 is that we get a significant increase in the ambition of people’s national commitments, national targets to do with climate change, that we get enough money, a 100 billion that has been promised for a long time now, committed to help the emerging economies deal with climate change, and we get an end to coal, a commitment from countries to put an end to the use of coal. That’s what I’m hoping for. I am not sure we’re going to get all of that, but there is certainly going to be a big effort made trying to achieve that.

It would be very damaging if China didn’t come. The a whole global regime for dealing the climate change basically stands on an axis of the US, China, and the EU. If China doesn’t come that foundation starts to fall. It would be very damaging, not just by the way, to climate change and to Britain and the Prime Minister’s aim is to get leaders British leadership recognized, but also to China. China is probably got the most exposed economy to a failure of climate policy. All of those exports are that come to us from China. That we get so worried about sometimes, come a from low lying eastern China, which is really subject to very damaging affects of climate change.

I completely agree with the Queen’s comments that it is really irritating when “they talk but they don’t do”, and it doesn’t just apply to other leaders. It applies to our own leaders as well, I think it is quite interesting to see how United the Royal family is on this. I can’t remember a time when they have all spoken out, in one way or another, are on are an issue. She is quite right, of course, because Australia is actually one of the worst performers on climate change, and that’s widely recognised everywhere. The real threat to a failure in COP26 is that it would be really damaging to everything, but from the Queen’s point of view, this would really damaging to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is full of people who will be real losers if climate policy fails, and I think the Royal family understand that very well.

These are excepts from an interview for LBC. The full discussion can be heard here: