Biden hopes to persuade leaders in virtual summit
WASHINGTON — President Biden is convening a coalition of the willing, the unwilling, the desperateforhelp and the avidformoney for a global summit Thursday aimed at rallying the world’s worst polluters to move faster against climate change.
The president’s first task: Convincing the world that the politically fractured United States isn’t just willing when it comes to Biden’s new ambitious emissionscutting pledges, but also able.
Success for Biden in the virtual summit of 40 leaders will be making his expected promises — cutting coal and petroleum emissions at home and financing climate efforts abroad — believable enough to persuade other powers to make big changes of their own.
For small countries already fighting for their survival, global climate progress noticeably slowed in the four years of former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the effort. Panama Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes hopes the United States’ highprofile return to international climate work will spur months of oneonone worldwide dealmaking leading up to November. That’s when there will be U.N. talks in Glasgow, where about 200 governments will be asked to spell out what each is willing to do to keep the
Earth from becoming a far hotter, more dangerous and less hospitable place.
With Biden’s summit, “we can start with that momentum,” Mouynes said. “Otherwise, it’s just empty speeches one after the other, where we all say we want a green country, a green planet, and nothing happens,“she said.
The summit will see Biden, who campaigned on promises for a highemployment, climatesaving technological transformation of the U.S. economy, pledge to halve the amount of coal and petroleum pollution the U.S. is pumping out by 2030, officials said this week. That’s compared to levels in 2005, and nearly double the voluntary target the U.S. set at the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord.
The European Parliament confirmed Wednesday that it will set a similarly ambitious target. The U.S. is looking to other allies, such as Japan and Canada, to announce their own intensified
climate efforts, hoping that will spur China and others to slow building of coalfired power plants and otherwise chill their smokestacks.
And the world is looking to welloff countries to make clear how they’ll help poorer countries shutter coal plants and retool energy grids, including $2 billion that the U.S. already promised but has never paid.
“The summit is not necessarily about everyone else bringing something new to the table — it’s really about the U.S. bringing their target to the world,” said Joanna Lewis, an expert in China energy and environment at Georgetown University.
The world’s top two climate offenders, China and the United States, are feuding over nonclimate issues. Chinese President Xi Jinping waited until Wednesday to confirm he would even take part.