Biden, world leaders try to find consensus on climate strategies
Washington — President Biden tried to hammer out the world’s next steps against rapidly worsening climate change in a private, virtual session with a small group of other global leaders Friday, and announced a new U.S.European pledge to cut climate-wrecking methane leaks.
Ever-grimmer findings from scientists this year that the world is nearing the point where the level of climate damage from burning oil, gas and coal becomes catastrophic and irreversible “represent a code red for humanity,” Biden said at the session’s outset.
“We have to act and we have to act now,” Biden said, speaking on a specially erected White House set that showed virtual arrays of solar panels in the background and a wall of other global leaders listening on screens.
Biden cited his trips earlier this month to California, where firefighters are battling larger, fiercer and deadlier wildfires almost year round as temperatures rise and drought worsens, and to the northeastern U.S. and Gulf, where Hurricane Ida and its flooding killed scores, as natural disasters increase in number and severity under climate change.
The Biden administration billed Friday’s meeting as a chance for some of the world leaders to strategize on how to achieve big, fast cuts in climate-damaging petroleum and coal emissions. The administration also is trying to reestablish the United States’ Major Economies Forum — a climate group set up by President Barack Obama and revived by Biden — as a significant forum for international climate negotiations.
The list provided of Friday’s attendees included only a dozen leaders: those of Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, the European Commission, the European Council, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United Nations.
China, India and Russia, with the United States, are the nations that emit the most climate-damaging gases from the production and burning of oil, natural gas and coal.
The White House said in a statement that Biden had directed his climate envoy, John Kerry, to lead a ministerlevel climate session afterward with China, Germany, India, and Russia.
Climate advocates have stressed the importance of the U.S. coordinating with Europe and Asia for a joint front in coaxing China, which emits more climate-damaging fumes than the rest of the developed world combined, to move faster on cutting its use of dirty-burning coal-fired power plants in particular.
Biden, in the public opening of the otherwise private talks, also discussed a new U.S. agreement with the European Union aimed at cutting the two entities’ emissions of methane 30% by the end of this decade. Methane is one of the most potent agents of climate damage, gushing up by the ton from countless uncapped oil and gas rigs, leaky natural gas pipelines, and other oil and gas facilities.
Fred Krupp, president of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said cutting methane pollution is the single fastest, most effective strategy to slow the rate of warming. A 30% reduction in methane pollution should be only “the entry point for this critical conversation. Many countries can and should aim even higher,” Krupp said.
The pledge comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set to propose stricter rules against methane emissions for the oil and gas sector, as laid out in one of Biden’s first executive orders.
Biden has sought to make the U.S. a leader again in global climate efforts after President Donald Trump removed the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.