Top climate adviser urges tougher goals
The United States needs to lay out aggressive carbon reduction targets when it meets with international leaders on climate change later this year, National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy said Thursday.
The Biden administration is set to make its first major international appearance on climate at the COP26 conference in Scotland in November, following a Trump administration that repeatedly questioned the severity of climate change.
“We have to rejoin the conversation in a way that is humble and realize we’ve lost a lot of time and a lot of credibility,” McCarthy said at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference Thursday. “The best way I know to do that is to really get moving.”
What specific targets and plans the Biden administration will offer when it files its National Determined Contribution document — a requirement now the United States has rejoined the Paris agreement on climate — has been the subject of increasing speculation. Former president Donald Trump withdrew the country from the agreement, which had been negotiated under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
President Joe Biden, Obama’s vice president, rejoined the international accord shortly after taking office.
So far countries have lagged on filing those documents, leading to questions whether world leaders are willing to make the hard choices of reducing emissions when so much of the global economy still runs on oil, natural gas and coal. Fossil fuels account for about 80 percent of the world’s energy.
McCarthy said some of the reductions would come through regulation and potentially national legislation, but reductions were already happening as industry comes under investor pressure to decarbonize. She pointed to her own stint running the Envi
ronmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration when, through federal regulation, the agency aimed to reduce emissions from the power sector 32 percent by 2030.
“Guess what? We got there by 2019,” she said. “These are efforts that will live far longer than the regulatory horizon.”
CERAWeek gets is name from Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the consulting firm co-founded by Daniel Yergin, now vice chairman of IHS Markit and host of the global energy conference.