Former US president Barack Obama has called on young people to "stay angry" in the fight against climate change at the COP26 summit by urged them to apply political pressure to make a change, but warned they would need to accept compromises along the way.
Mr Obama said the world is nowhere near able to avoid a future climate catastrophe and criticised Donald Trump's hostility toward climate science.
But he did say that the US is ready to lead again - he also highlighted the Chinese and Russian leaders for not physically attending the COP26 summit.
Speaking in Glasgow, Mr Obama received rapturous applause when he took to the stage and a standing ovation at the end of his speech - but there was pushback from activists. He called out nations for failing to meet the pledges they made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, when he was in the White House.
He admitted there is still a lot of hard and messy work to do to reduce the effects of climate change, but said some promising progress had been made in the six years since the signing of the Paris Agreement, which he helped spearhead. He dedicated his speech to young activists, who he said were right to be frustrated.
Addressing young people directly, he said that they couldn't ignore politics, and that while protesting and hashtags raise awareness, they should get involved in politics at some level.
He said: "You don't have to be happy about it, but you can't ignore it. You can't be too pure for politics." He also called on young people to support businesses that were committed to sustainability, and boycott those that were not.
Obama's catchphrase of the night was telling young activists to "stay angry." He went on: "To all the young people out there - I want you to stay angry. I want you to stay frustrated.
"Channel that anger and harness that frustration by keeping on pushing harder and harder for more and more. That's what's required to meet that challenge."
He honoured the dedication of activists such as Greta Thunberg for forming movements across borders and urged young people to get out and vote for politicians who will stand against climate change.
"Vote like your life depends on it, because it does", he said.
The former president insisted that despite political divisions in the US and the country's absence from global climate efforts for four years during the Trump administration, America was now back on track and committed to change. Donald Trump controversially pulled out of the Paris climate accord when he was in office and once called climate change "an expensive hoax," but under President Joe Biden, the US rejoined the accord.
Mr Obama closed by saying: "The thing we have going for us is that humanity has done hard things before, and I believe we can do hard things again."
