Joe Biden swings focus of climate effort from US to the world

Glasgow, November 1

President Joe Biden was swinging the focus of his battle for fast, concerted action against global warming from the US Congress to the world on Monday, appealing to global leaders at a UN summit to commit to the kind of big climate measures that he is still working to nail down at home.

Speaking to world leaders at the newly opened climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Biden planned to tote up his not-yet year-old administration's climate efforts and announce new climate initiatives, including billions of dollars in hoped-for legislation to help poorer communities abroad deal with climate damage already underway.

Wading back into hands-on diplomacy with allies overseas this week after the withdrawal of the Trump administration, Biden on the eve of his climate summit arrival touted “the power of America showing up”.

The Glasgow summit is often billed as essential to putting the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord into action.

But Biden and his administration face obstacles in prodding the United States and other nations to act fast enough on climate, abroad as at home. In the runup to the summit, the administration has tried hard to temper expectations that two weeks of talks involving more than 100 world leaders will produce major breakthroughs on cutting climate-damaging emissions.

Rather than a quick fix, “Glasgow is the beginning of this decade race, if you will”, Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, told reporters Sunday.

As the summit opens, the United States is still struggling to get some of the world’s biggest climate polluters—China, Russia, and India—to join the US and its allies in stronger pledges to burn far less coal, gas, and oil and to move to cleaner energy.

Kerry on Sunday defended the outcome of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies that ended earlier that day in Rome. The G-20 meeting was supposed to create momentum for more climate progress in Glasgow, and leaders at the Italy summit did agree on a series of measures, including formalising a pledge to cut off international subsidies for dirty-burning, coal-fired power plants.

Biden also lauded a separate US-European Union steel agreement announced Sunday as a chance to curb imports of “dirty” Chinese steel forged by coal power. It’s another step toward potentially using Western markets as leverage to persuade China, the world’s top climate polluter, to ease up in its enthusiasm for coal power.

But G-20 leaders offered more vague pledges than commitments of firm action, saying they would seek carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century”. Major polluters including China and Russia have made clear they had no immediate intention of following the US and its European and Asian allies to zero out all fossil fuel pollution by 2050. Scientists say massive, fast cuts in fossil fuel pollution are essential to having any hope of keeping global warming at or below the limits set in the Paris climate accord.

The world currently is on track for a level of warming that would melt much of the planet’s ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, experts say.

Biden told reporters Sunday night he personally found the outcome of the Rome summit “disappointing,” countering the positive assessments of his aides. And he put the blame on two rivals of the US.

“The disappointment relates to the fact that Russia, and ... not only Russia but China basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate changes,” Biden said.

The Biden administration on Monday released its strategy for turning talk into reality in transforming the US into an entirely clean energy nation by 2050. The long-term plan, filed in compliance with the Paris agreement, lays out a United States increasingly running on wind, solar and other clean energy, Americans zipping around in electric vehicles and on mass transit, state-of-the-art technology, and wide-open spaces carefully preserved to soak up carbon dioxide from the air.

The Biden administration has succeeded, over 10 months of diplomacy leading up to the Glasgow summit, in helping win significant new climate pledges from allies. That includes persuading many foreign governments to set more ambitious targets for emissions cuts, promoting a global pledge to cut emissions of a potent climate harm, methane, and the promise from leading economies to end funding for coal energy abroad.

European leaders make clear they are happy to see Biden and the US back in the climate effort after his predecessor, Donald Trump, turned his back on the Paris accord and on allies in general. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen smiled at Biden throughout the announcement on Sunday’s steel deal, calling him “dear Joe”. — AP