Biden urges climate action under spectre of fuel crisis

Russian invasion of Ukraine has left US and different international locations looking for extra fossil gasoline output, threatening local weather targets.

Biden climate
US President Joe Biden speaks as he hosts the Main Economies Discussion board on Power and Local weather Change (MEF) on the White Home Advanced in Washington, DC [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]

United States President Joe Biden has urged world leaders to ramp up efforts to fight local weather change because the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to underline the deep reliance on fossil fuels by the world’s prime emitters.

The assembly of the Main Economies Discussion board on Power and Local weather (MEF), the third such discussion board since Biden took workplace and the biggest leader-level local weather gathering earlier than the United Nation’s COP27 local weather convention in November, comes at an ungainly time for the US president, who has urged elevated oil manufacturing each domestically and overseas, amid hovering costs.

Nonetheless, Biden informed these assembled just about on Friday that “local weather safety and power safety go hand in hand”.

“We can't afford to let the essential objective of limiting world warming to 1.5 levels Celsius slip out of our attain and the science tells us that the window for motion is quickly narrowing,” Biden mentioned.

“So I urge these international locations that haven't but performed so to set a 2030 emissions goal to align with the Paris [accord] temperature objective … And to strengthen their targets for COP27,” he added, referring to the objective specified by the 2015 Paris local weather accord of maintaining world temperatures beneath a 1.5 diploma Celsius (2.7 levels Fahrenheit) improve in contrast with pre-industrial ranges.

“On the similar time, we'd like new initiatives to speed up our progress towards our targets and bolster our resilience,” he mentioned.

Previous to Biden’s speech, the White Home laid out a collection of recent initiatives and measures, saying Washington anticipated world leaders to “increase ambitions” in combating rising world temperatures at Friday’s discussion board and pledge to hitch “new efforts and initiatives geared toward tackling the local weather disaster whereas advancing energy-security and food-security”.

A senior Biden administration mentioned 23 international locations have been represented by video convention on the discussion board, together with a lot of the world’s main economies. Members of the MEF account for roughly 80 % of world financial output in addition to 80 % of world greenhouse gasoline emissions.

Underscoring the present diplomatic complexities of world cooperation, Russia didn't attend Friday’s summit. China, the world’s largest emitter, was set to solely be represented by Beijing’s local weather envoy, and never President Xi Jinping. India, one other main emitter, was additionally not included on the official record of attendees.

Chatting with these gathered, Biden outlined a US-European Union initiative to construct on a September 2021 pledge to chop emissions of methane, a planet-warming gasoline, a minimum of 30 % beneath 2020 ranges by 2030. Greater than 100 international locations signed onto the plan on the United Nation’s COP26 local weather convention in Glasgow final yr.

The “world methane power pathway” introduced by the US and EU on Friday would require adopting international locations to decide to the best discount of methane emissions potential by tapping “new technical and monetary sources and/or by enhancing home venture and coverage motion”.

Washington additionally deliberate to spend $21.5bn on large-scale “demonstration initiatives” – modern initiatives to scale back emissions that may be replicated internationally – and urge different international locations to chip in to succeed in a $90bn objective, Biden mentioned.

After final yr signing an government order that mandated that half of all light-duty autos bought within the US be zero-emission by 2030, Biden urged the discussion board to “be part of us in an analogous objective”.

The US president additionally introduced a “problem” for the upcoming COP27 – created by the US, Norway and Denmark – to encourage governments, ports and cargo house owners to give you concrete steps in direction of full decarbonisation no later than 2050.

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