John Kerry: Glasgow Climate Pact was 'enormously successful'

US climate envoy John Kerry says the Glasgow Climate Pact is still viable despite Vladimir Putin “using gas energy as a weapon”.

Speaking to BBC Scotland, the former secretary of state said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “presented a challenger” to the agreement made at COP26 last year, but it can be overcome.

Kerry said: “What Vladimir Putin has done by using gas energy as a weapon, is to convince Europe that it has to move faster.

"So, in fact, Europe is going to try to move to deploy renewable energy, wind, solar, etc, much faster than they originally had planned.

"The key will be finding greater levels of finance on an international basis to accelerate the transition to those renewables so that investment begins to move there faster."

Kerry added that the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow was “enormously successful in raising ambition”, and if all the commitments made by nations at the summit were fulfilled, Earth "would be at 1.8 degrees of warming by 2050" - but warned there has "not been enough movement to implement those promises".

"The bottom line is we're in trouble right now unless we can turn things around faster over the next eight years," he said.

"We have to still fight for the 1.5, as hard as it may be. But I remain an optimist, because I think that if we do what we've promised to do, we can have a 45% global cut globally between now and 2030."