Limit of 1.5C global heating is at risk, Alok Sharma warns at Cop27

Previous summit's president tells ministers no backsliding' must be allowed over climate crisis red line'

Alok Sharma, the former UK cabinet minister who presided over the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow last year, has warned delegates at Cop27 that the possibility of limiting global heating to no more than 1.5C may be at risk.

We'll either leave Egypt having kept 1.5C alive, or this will be the Cop where we lose 1.5C," Sharma said at the opening on Monday of the high-level ministerial roundtable on pre-2030 ambition.