Biden wants the US to lead the world against the climate crisis; objective will be tested

US President Joe Biden’s ambitions to lead the world in reducing global warming will be tested on two continents this week, while the president is in Scotland for the most important climate talks in years. In the United States, legislators are moving closer to making their visions a reality.

It’s a pivotal time, not just for the president, but for a world with little time left to resolve a climate crisis that is wreaking havoc right now.

Biden has already been hurt by infighting between Democrats and entrenched fossil fuel interests, which have forced him to scale back some of the boldest aspects of his climate agenda. Deep differences among world leaders also persist over money, national interests and responsibility.

Still, Biden is entering the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, with a message of urgency, and what he hopes is a plan convincing enough to fulfill his pledge to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030.

The proposals currently pending in Congress, which Biden said on Sunday (31) he believed could be passed this week, reflect historic investments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

The day before the summit began, the G20 leaders in Rome endorsed a commitment to keeping the global average temperature rise at 1.5ºC, a symbolic gesture that nevertheless represents progress. Biden’s challenge this week will be to convince other leaders that the United States will remain committed to the cause and to persuade them to do more for themselves.

“We think this is the decisive decade, the decision decade, the action decade. And it’s critical that countries establish long-term plans,” said John Kerry, the US envoy on climate change, on the eve of the summit.

Biden’s team has mounted a show of force in Glasgow that will include Cabinet members, 40 members of Congress and even former President Barack Obama. While it’s important for appearances, officials say the presence is also explicitly designed to emphasize that message — and the view within Biden’s team that it’s a time when the United States must not just demonstrate its own commitments and aggressive actions. , but also leverage them to lead.

Goals in Glasgow

Kerry set four main goals for the United States in the Scottish negotiations:

• Increase global ambition to contain rising temperatures;
• Make countries commit to action in this decade;
• Boost funding and adaptation efforts in vulnerable communities;
• Conclude negotiations on the implementation guidelines for the Paris Climate Agreement.

Biden will carry with him significant commitments from the private sector aimed at bolstering his selling point, as well as a willingness to help smaller countries with the finance and technical expertise they may lack.

Biden was expected to arrive in Glasgow after approving a spending package that contained the largest US investment in combating climate change, a sign to the world that he was serious about reducing greenhouse gases. The plan fell short, announcing just a proposal hours before leaving for Europe last week. The bills have not yet been voted on, as Democrats continue to argue over the deadline.

It’s just the latest example that global actors can point to as cause for skepticism, after more than three decades of watching the pendulum of US leadership swing on an increasingly urgent and dire issue.

Still, it seems likely that broad social legislation will pass eventually, perhaps even this week. Furthermore, even when the bill lost its top liberal priorities and shrank from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion (from BRL 19.75 trillion to BRL9.88 trillion), it kept the $555 billion ($3.1 trillion) originally envisioned in climate and clean energy clauses, the largest single climate legislative investment in American history.

“As the president said, it’s a big deal. I agree with him, but I would say it’s a big deal,” said Gina McCarthy, the president’s national climate adviser.

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The proposal does not include a crucial clean electricity program, removed after Senator Joe Manchin stepped back.

Manchin represents West Virginia, a coal-rich state, and has close ties to the industry. But it does contain $320 billion (about R$1.8 trillion) in tax credits for clean energy and electric vehicles, a National Climate Corps of 300,000 people, and a “green bank” program designed to provide loans for projects in clean energy.

Biden’s failure to arrive in Glasgow with an agreement with the legislature in hand was downplayed by the authorities as having little effect on the views of leaders at the summit itself, apparently ignoring Biden’s own private message to lawmakers in the oval office that “ the prestige” of the country was at stake.

Former US climate envoy Todd Stern, who served in the Obama administration, told CNN that the country is heading “to Glasgow in a very strong position with a very good goal” and that the package is “legitimately far and wide” , the biggest climate change bill of all time.”

“I think you can look at this package and say it puts us on the right path, but it can’t guarantee that,” Stern said.

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But some top senators didn’t explicitly support the bill, meaning there could still be some last-minute tweaks. Democratic climate bosses are working to prevent all $555 billion in climate provisions from being reduced, rather than pushing for new provisions to be added.

Still, despite all the political discussion within the United States about what the framework Biden has set up means and does not mean, officials still see it as concrete proof of the country’s commitment to the climate. Gone is an amorphous, albeit ambitious, proposal that was still being reshaped and chipped by lawmakers. In its place are crystal clear details of the most significant climate action in American history.

The $555 billion makes it the biggest element in the entire Biden proposal, something the president cited repeatedly behind closed doors in Rome as a clear and tangible example of US leadership and determination on the walk to Glasgow, according to two officials. .

Still, world leaders can be forgiven for appearing skeptical. After Barack Obama made fighting change a priority during his administration, Donald Trump reversed course, taking the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement and reversing regulations on exhaust emissions, power plants and more. World leaders still remember the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States refused to ratify.

Biden expects more durable climate commitments as part of the new spending plan, but is still in the process of creating rules for other items, such as reducing methane emissions.

Decrees and regulations

In addition to Biden’s climate legislative agenda, his administration is also expected to soon release a series of presidential decrees and federal regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas producers and power plants.

The government is putting significant emphasis on reducing methane emissions both at home and abroad, in hopes of helping to limit global warming to 1.5°C, which scientists say the world must go down to avoid the worst impacts of methane. climate change.

In addition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules on methane, the Biden government, in partnership with the European Union, is also calling on countries to sign a Global Methane Commitment to reduce methane emissions by 30 % by the end of the decade.

Although Biden only participates in the first two days of COP26 in Glasgow, his top climate officials will be there longer. Kerry, the top US climate negotiator in international negotiations, will participate in the entire two-week summit.

And McCarthy will attend for six days. McCarthy may comment during Glasgow on the White House’s broader climate strategy, which was released on Monday, to get the United States net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

energy crisis

The challenges of moving to renewable energy were showcased during the G20 summit, in which Biden encouraged energy-producing nations to increase supply as gas prices rise in the United States.

Officials said the request was short-term and that Biden was not backing down from his commitment to transitioning the country to green energy.

“If they were asking them to increase their production in five years, I would give up,” Kerry said. “But that’s not it.” The G20 brought another display of target increase. While the leaders collectively endorsed for the first time the need to keep the global temperature rise at 1.5°C, they did not specify how they would go about it.

Although they pledged to end international funding for coal projects, they did not mention the end of coal in their countries.

“If the G20 was a dress rehearsal for COP26, world leaders have distorted their lines,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, in a statement. “Their final statement was weak, lacking ambition and vision, and it simply failed to meet the need of the moment.”

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Leading G20 participants also gave an uncompromising warning about failing to secure more in the coming days.

“If we don’t act now, the Paris Agreement will be seen in the future, not as the moment when humanity opened its eyes to the problem, but as the moment when we step back and walk away,” said the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson told reporters before leaving Rome.

For his part, Biden expressed enthusiasm for the results of the G20, but said it would be up to the nations to fulfill their promises.

“The proof will be the action. I think you will see that we have made significant progress and more needs to be done, but that will require us to continue to focus on what China is not doing, what Russia is not doing, what Saudi Arabia is not doing.”

In Glasgow, as in Rome, key leaders such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will be absent. Kerry, in particular, has been pushing to engage these countries despite their deteriorating relations with the US government, believing the climate is an area where even adversaries must cooperate.

Biden said on Sunday 31 that he is disappointed that big polluters like China and Russia are not showing up at this week’s international summits.

“The disappointment is related to the fact that Russia — not just Russia, but China — has basically not come up in terms of any commitment to deal with climate change. There is a reason why people should be disappointed in this,” Biden declared at a press conference at the end of the G20 summit in Rome.

While there is no uniform view within the government about China’s intentions, there is tangible skepticism about Beijing’s willingness (or ability) to produce the necessary actions to fulfill commitments that are now seen as a necessity. The promises that China made before the summit, which match but do not advance the 2020 targets, only served to underscore that reality, a US official said.

The absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping from both the G20 and the Glasgow summit was seen by some officials as a clear opportunity for the United States.

Government officials have planned to use the Chinese absence to push a nascent financing program that Biden and his team see as critical to challenging China’s growing influence. The Build Back Better World initiative pales in comparison to the size and scale of China’s Belt and Route project.

But when announced at the G7 in June, the Biden plan was presented as a clear alternative option for the least developed countries that would be driven by higher standards in both work and climate.

“Is it ideal? No,” an American official said of the effect Xi’s absence would have on the outcome of the summit. “But is it an opportunity? Absolutely.”