Biden will unveil more climate plans

US President Joe Biden’s administration this week will release more policies it believes are needed to tackle climate change and is urging China to toughen one of its targets on greenhouse gas emissions, his top climate advisers said on Saturday.

Gina McCarthy, the White House’s national climate adviser, did not say what policies would be released. A memo seen by Reuters on Thursday showed Mr Biden will unveil a second round of executive orders as soon as Wednesday that include an omnibus order to combat climate change domestically and elevate the issue as a national security priority.

“We’ve already sent signals on the things that we don’t like that we’re going to roll back, but this week you’re going to see us move forward with what’s the vision of the future,” Ms McCarthy told a virtual meeting of the US Conference of Mayors.

Mr Biden quickly issued executive orders cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline that would import tar sands oil from Canada and rejoining the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Both of those moves reversed former President Donald Trump’s policies. During his four years in office, Mr Trump rolled back about 100 regulations on climate and the environment as he pursued a policy of “energy dominance” to maximise output and exports of oil, gas and coal.

John Kerry, Mr Biden’s special climate envoy, said a recent pledge by China, the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter, was “not good enough.” In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping set a goal for his country to become carbon neutral by 2060, 10 years after the 2050 time frame favoured by most countries, while also pledging a more ambitious short-term goal on emissions.

Mr Kerry in 2015 helped bring China to the table at the UN climate conference in Paris. Now, the Biden administration has begun to apply diplomatic pressure on countries to work harder on climate, said Mr Kerry.

He talked on Friday with foreign ministers in Europe, who told him they had high expectations for the Biden administration after a lack of action on climate in the Trump years.

“‘Yeah, we realise we come back with humility,’” Mr Kerry said he told the ministers, adding that the majority of US states and more than 1,000 mayors continued to move ahead on climate during the Trump years.

The United States has to do better than getting to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Mr Kerry said.