PM hails US return to climate agreement
PRIME Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says newly sworn-in US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris have more than just a chance to bring America back into the Paris Agreement.
He made this comment on his official Twitter account yesterday and said “the two leaders can save the planet as we know it”.
“From the frontlines in Fiji, that commitment can’t come soon enough,” Mr Bainimarama tweeted,
After being sworn-in yesterday, Mr Biden signed an executive order for the US to rejoin the Paris Agreement, a process that is expected to take 30 days.
“We’re going to combat climate change in a way we have not before,” Mr Biden said in the Oval Office yesterday.
Foreign leaders hailed Mr Biden’s first moves as a powerful signal that the US – the largest contributor to global warming in history – intends to restart its efforts to lower pollution levels and to restore the international order upended by former president Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the US was the first nation in the world to formally withdraw from the Paris climate agreement last year.
WASHINGTON –– Joe Biden was sworn in as President of the United States on Wednesday, offering a message of unity and restoration to a deeply divided country reeling from a battered economy and a raging coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans.
Standing on the steps of the US Capitol two weeks after a mob of then-president Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building, Mr Biden called for a return to civic decency in an inaugural address marking the end of Mr Trump’s tempestuous four-year term.
“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity,” Mr Biden, a Democrat, said after taking the oath of office.
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this –– if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.”
The themes of Mr Biden’s 21-minute speech mirrored those he had put at the centre of his presidential campaign, when he portrayed himself as an empathetic alternative to the divisive Mr Trump, a Republican.
Saying there was “no time to waste”, Mr Biden signed 15 executive actions shortly after entering the White House on Wednesday afternoon to set a new course and overturn some of Mr Trump’s most controversial policies.
The orders included mandating masks on federal property, halting the withdrawal from the World Health Organization, rejoining the Paris climate accord and ending a travel ban on some Muslimmajority countries.
Mr Biden told reporters in the Oval Office that Mr Trump had left him “a very generous letter”, but he would not disclose its contents.
The inauguration itself, one unlike any other in US history, served as a stark reminder of both the tumult that defined the Mr Trump era as well as the pandemic that still threatens the country.
Amid warnings of possible renewed violence, thousands of armed National Guard troops circled the Capitol in an unprec
edented show of force.
The National Mall, typically packed with throngs of supporters, instead was filled with nearly 200,000 US flags.
Attending dignitaries –– including former US presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton –– wore masks and sat several feet apart.
Mr Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, became the first Black person, first woman and first Asian American to serve as vice-president after she was sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina member..