Biden to world’s leaders: ‘Double down’ on climate
President touts clean energy successes at global conference
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — President Joe Biden, speaking Friday at an annual international summit on climate change, urged world leaders to “double down” on their resolve to fight global warming, saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforces the need to phase out fossil fuels.
“We can no longer plead ignorance to the consequences of our actions, or continue to repeat our mistakes,” Biden said.
The president’s brief attendance at the United Nations climate conference, known as COP27, was largely a victory lap as he emphasized new spending on clean energy initiatives that will “change the paradigm” for the United States and the rest of the world.
But Biden glossed over how he’s pushed for more oil and gas production to bring down costs that have been politically troublesome at home, and fueled the invasion of Ukraine by allowing Russia to fetch higher prices for its energy exports.
“This gathering must be the moment to recommit our future and our shared capacity to write a better story for the world,” Biden said.
Biden spent just three hours in Egypt, including a meeting with the country’s autocratic president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, before departing for Cambodia to meet Southeast Asian leaders and then Indonesia for the annual Group of 20 summit of the world’s largest economies.
Biden left Washington late Thursday buoyed by a stronger-than-expected showing by the Democratic Party in Tuesday’s midterm elections, earlier congressional passage of the largest climate investment in U.S. history and Russian military setbacks in Ukraine.
At the climate conference, Biden discussed a new rule that will crack down on methane emissions, expanding on a similar regulation his administration released last year. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming.
The new rule will help ensure the United States meets a goal set by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels, Biden said. The 2021 rule targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells as previous EPA regulations have done.
The new rule also takes aim at all drilling sites, including smaller wells that now will be required to find and plug methane leaks. Small wells currently are subject to an initial inspection but are rarely checked again for leaks. The proposal also requires operators to respond to credible thirdparty reports of high-volume methane leaks.
Biden also spotlighted one of his key domestic successes — the Democrats’ massive health care and climate change bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
The U.S. commitment of some $375 billion over a decade to fight climate change gives Biden leverage to press other nations to fulfill their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and shift the global economy toward cleaner energy sources.
“The United States government is putting our money where our mouth is,” he said.
The president was in a far different position from last year’s gathering, which came about during a particularly unhappy stretch in the bill’s tortuous path to passage.
That summit resulted in additional global commitments to meet temperature targets agreed to in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which Biden rejoined after his predecessor, President Donald Trump, pulled the
U.S. from the deal.
Biden argued that “good climate policy is good economic policy,” and he called on all major emitting countries to “align their ambition” to the international goal of trying to limit future global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the White House.
Biden acknowledged that climate crises are “hitting hardest those countries and communities that have the fewest resources to respond and recover,” a reference to a leading issue at the summit.
Known as “loss and
damage,” it involves asking rich countries to pay what are essentially reparations for damages caused to poorer nations that don’t emit much heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Biden announced in his speech the U.S. would contribute $150 million “as a down payment” to initiatives to help Africa adapt to the changing climate, but that did not satisfy concerns.
“We would like for the U.S. to step up their game on loss and damage,” Sierra Club President Ramon Cruz said.