Biden pitches world on robust climate agenda that’s on shaky ground at home
Speaking at a high-profile climate summit that attracted more than 100 world leaders, President
Joe Biden apologized Monday for the Trump administration’s inaction on climate, lending a personal note to his administration’s efforts to sharply reverse the U.S. position on what he views as an existential issue.
“I guess I shouldn’t apolmeeting ogize — but I do apologize for the fact that the United States and the last administration pulled out of the Paris accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit,” said Biden, speaking briefly at a breakout meeting of world leaders at the COP26 climate summit.
Presidents rarely apologize for broad U.S. policies, even when they are pushing to change them, and the message carried additional resonance for being delivered overseas. Biden’s comments, which came during a smaller after his address to the opening session of the climate conference, highlighted the policy U-turn that he is seeking and underscored how Biden is using this foreign trip to move America away from his predecessor’s policies.
During the Trump administration, the United States, the world’s largest economy, walked away from the Paris climate accord and was virtually invisible at international climate talks. But the Biden administration has shown up in force in Glasgow, Scotland, with a delegation featuring the president, a big majority of his Cabinet and a sizable group of career officials. American luminaries such as former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Al Gore are also taking part.
“This is the decisive decade,” Biden said in remarks to fellow world leaders. “To state the obvious, we meet with the eyes of history upon us.”
Biden plans to spend the next two days in Scotland working to reestablish the United States as a leader on climate issues. Shortly before he spoke Monday, the White House released a strategy to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and announced that more than 70 countries have joined an initiative led by the United States and the European Union to reduce methane emissions by 30% by the end of the decade.
The president will also work with Congress to set aside $3 billion a year to help developing countries adapt to climate change. That sum, which will go toward protecting the world’s poorer citizens from rising seas and temperatures, is part of the $11.4 billion that Biden already announced at the U.N. General Assembly in September.
Biden said the United States has a special responsibility to lead on climate because it is a major greenhouse-gas contributor.
The president sought to put the issue in historical terms, signaling that he was thinking of his legacy and that of his generation of leaders. Speaking at the smaller forum, Biden mused about what “future historians” would write about how heads of state acted in this decade, whether they would say “we let this final chance to stem the crisis slip through our fingers” or “in the 2020s, we stepped up.”
For all the dramatic talk and sweeping promises, the limits of the conference were evident, too.
China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the leaders of two major greenhouse-gas-producing countries, declined to attend the conference. Given the growing confrontation between those two powers and Western nations, their decision to snub the summit could forecast difficulty in persuading them to join global efforts to fight climate change.
Some climate activists dismissed the goals set by Biden and other world leaders in Glasgow as woefully inadequate to address the looming disaster. Others noted that Biden so far has been unable to pass the climate program embodied in two major bills before Congress, his infrastructure plan and his Build Back Better social-spending package.
“Biden is at Glasgow empty-handed, with nothing but words on paper,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement. “It is humiliating and fails to meet the moment that we’re in.”
The president’s pledge to pour billions into developing countries as they try to fend off the floods, droughts and famines resulting from climate change came as a surprise to those watching closely. It was read by some as a way to counter China, which has been pursuing a program to construct major projects in developing countries.
“Biden’s unexpectedly strong emphasis on financing for developing countries can be seen as a direct attempt to counter China’s influence through its Belt and Road global infrastructure efforts,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser who is now with the Progressive Policy Institute.
Biden’s aid for developing countries needs congressional approval. Biden touted his Build Back Better agenda in Glasgow, saying it would enable the United States to meet his goal of cutting emissions by 50% or more by the end of the decade. The Biden White House has also set a goal of making the power sector 100% carbon-free by 2035.