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My environmental specialist colleagues are doing a Q&A with readers about Cop26 now. You can follow it on a live blog here. As you would expect, the answers are more detailed and less glib than they were in the earlier Q&A. (See 12.52pm.)

Failure to act on climate change will be a “betrayal of young people around the world” and risks life on earth becoming “unrecognisable”, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said this morning.

In a speech ahead of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, Sturgeon warned that even keeping temperature rises to 1.5C would not prevent all the damaging impacts of climate change. Sturgeon said:

The hard fact is this: ‘Keeping 1.5 alive’ – which has become the strapline almost for Cop26 – is vital. It mustn’t become a face-saving slogan. It must be real.

And both in the run-up to and at Cop itself, there needs to be a significant uplift in ambition from the world’s biggest-emitting countries to make that real.

And each and every country gathered round the negotiating table also knows the action that is needed to prevent it. So there is not excuse for failing to act.

Sturgeon said that “justice and fairness will be central to Scotland’s whole approach to Cop26” and she promised to “work to ensure that leaders of my generation understand that failure to act now would be a betrayal of young people around the world”.

Although Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, has generally impressed environmentalists with the seriousnessness with which he has taken preparations for the summit, the same cannot be said for Boris Johnson. He took a holiday two weeks ago, he is unwilling to accept the possible downsides of moving to net zero, and this morning he asked for advice on his negotiating strategy from a room full of children. (See 11.52pm.) In 1980, when the then US president Jimmy Carter spoke about consulting his 13-year-old daughter about nuclear policy, he produced a soundbite seen as fatal to his presidential campaign.

Johnson’s intervention was harmless by comparison (in the 1980s US analogy, he is much more Ronald Reagan than the priggish Jimmy Carter), and he was clearly just humouring his audience. But there are probably better ways of making the point that Cop26 is an issue of intergenerational justice. And environmentalists would love to hear him engage seriously with the Cop26 issues, instead of joking about feeding people to animals.

That said, Johnson made a provocative argument about plastics during his Q&A (albeit one that could undermine support for recycling initiatives). Here are the key points he made.

• Johnson said that he was “very worried” about the Cop26 summit failing. Referring to the difficulty of getting an agreement to deliver net zero by 2050, he said:

I think it can be done. It will be very very tough, this summit, and I’m very worried because it might go wrong and we might not get the agreements that we need, and it’s touch and go. It’s very, very difficult. But I think it can be done.

He said there would be a lot of “peer pressure” on countries at the summit to produce proper net zero plans. But, he went on, “it’s very, very far from clear that we will get the progress that we need”.

• He dismissed plastic recycling as an enviromental “red herring”, saying what mattered was cutting plastic use. He said:

The issue with plastics is recycling isn’t the answer, I’ve got to be honest with you. Recycling – you’re not going to like this –

You can only recycle plastic a couple of times, really, and what you got to do is stop the production of plastic, stop the the first use of plastic. The recycling thing is a red herring.

Johnson’s remark led to an embarrassing disagreement with his fellow speaker at the event, WWF UK’s chief executive, Tanya Steele. After Johnson described recycling as a red herring, Steele suggested he had gone a bit too far. She said:

We have to reduce, we have to reuse – I do think we need to do a little bit of recycling, PM, and have some system to do so.

But Johnson interrupted, effectively contradicting her. He said:

It doesn’t work. I don’t want to be doctrinaire about this but – if people think that we can recycle our way out of the problem, we will be making a huge mistake. We need to reduce our use [of plastics], we need far, far less.

• Johnson named Coca-Cola as one of 12 global companies “producing the overwhelming bulk of the world’s plastics”. He said these companies needed to find alternative types of packaging.

• He joked about feeding people to animals as a means of addressing the imbalance in nature. After Steele said that 97% of mammals on the planet were humans and their livestock, and just 3% was “left for the wild”, Johnson said that was “so sad”. He added: “We could feed some of the human beings to the animals.”

A girl says eating more yoghurt and seaweed could be good for people, not just for cows.

(Both ideas came up earlier as a means of getting cows to produce less methane.)

Johnson says perhaps we’ll all end up eating yoghurt and seaweed.

And that’s it.

I will post the highlights (in so far as there were any) shortly.

A girl says there should be more pedestrian-only areas.

Johnson says he agrees with that. But he says you should be careful about mixing cyclists and pedestrians. As London mayor, he built more cycle lanes, he says.

A girl says she hopes Johnson will consider her plan for a water-powered car.

Johnson says that sounds like a fantastic idea.

Q: What sacrifices will you make personnally?

Johnson says he would like everyone to stop using hydrocarbon cars. He says he would like to go back to the time when he was able to ride everywhere by bike.

A girl says all schools should have solar panels.

Johnson says that is ultimately the solution we will want.

A girl says in some countries they are burning coal because they need to pay for food.

Johnson agrees. He says it is not fair to ask poor countries to make sacrifices. That is why the richer countries are giving them $100bn a year to help.

A boy says all schools should have electric minibuses.

Johnson says that is a brilliant idea.

A boy says the government should cut the prices of electric cars and solar panels.

Johnson agrees. He says he recently spoke to manufacturers who said they would cut the price of electric vehicles very soon.

Q: Do you still support new coalmines in the UK?

Johnson says he does not want to support new coalmine.

A girl tells Johnson people do not buy electric cars because there are not enough charging points.

Johnson agrees. Most people will be able to charge their cars at home, he says.

Another girl says we need more green spaces.

Johnson says she is “completely right”. We neeed an extra trillion trees, he says.

Johnson invites his audience to tell him what he should say to world leaders.

A boy says he should tell world leaders that they need to join in too, and that it is not just the UK that is doing this.

Johnson says he will do that.

Johnson says recycling plastic is a “red herring” because plastic can only be recycled a couple of times.

Steele says there is a role for recycling.

Johnson says it does not work. People think we can recycle our way out of this problem, but we cannot, he says. He says the key thing is to reduce the use of plastic.

Johnson says he thinks world leaders are listening. He says he has spoken to many of them in recent weeks and they are making significant developments.

In particular, he cites the Australian move towards agreeing net zero by 2050. That was very significant for Australia because it produces so much coal, he says. It was a “heroic thing”, he says. He says he hopes more countries will follow.

Q: What can we do to protect the oceans and wildlife?

Johnson says he wants to ensure that 30% of oceans in the world are protected by 2030. It is the 30 x 30 campaign, he says. He says the UK can play a big part because it controls a large amount of sea. He says 30% of the world’s emperor penguins are British.

Johnson says everyone must use less plastic.

The WWF UK chief executive, Tanya Steele, who is appearing alongside Johnson, adds “we need to move away from single use anything”.

Johnson says around 12 global companies, like Coca-Cola, are producing most of the world’s plastic. He says we have to move away from that.

Steele says plastic is “quite symbolic of how we are treating our world”. It is important to take care of our resources, and not waste anything, she says.

Johnson says at Cop26 he will have to ask world leaders to take decisions that will save the planet. He says all countries are going to have to make sacrifices, like giving up coal-fired power stations.

Johnson says the children asking questions are journalists.

Q: You treated Covid like an emergency. Why are you not doing the same for climate change?

Johnson says he thinks that is a “very fair criticism”. He says they need to address this urgently. But he says a lot has happened. He says 80% of the world’s economies are now signed up to net zero.