GLASGOW, Scotland — President Joe Biden assured world leaders at the United Nations global climate summit that the United States will pass legislation making unprecedented investments in clean energy and keep its promise to slash its carbon emissions.
“We’ll demonstrate to the world the U.S. is not only back at the table, but hopefully leading by the power of our example,” the president said in a speech Monday. “I know it hasn’t been the case, and that’s why my administration is working overtime to show our climate commitment is action, not words.”
Biden’s speech sought to bolster other leaders’ climate ambitions at a time when expectations for the summit are low, despite scientists’ warning that the world is dangerously overheating.
Congress’ failure to pass significant climate legislation before the summit got underway has left Biden in a weaker negotiating position than the White House had hoped. Major emitters like China, India and Russia have balked at setting more ambitious goals to slash carbon emissions. And a meeting of the Group of 20 in Rome ended Sunday with an agreement that critics said fell far short of meaningful action to curb rising temperatures.
Speaking Monday during the summit’s opening ceremony, Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, cautioned that recent announcements from the top polluting countries might incorrectly give the impression that the world is on track to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
“This is an illusion,” he said. “Even if the recent pledges were clear and credible, and there are serious questions about some of them, we are still careening towards climate catastrophe.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain compared the fight against climate change to James Bond working feverishly to disarm a bomb while a clock counted down to oblivion.
“If we fail, they will not forgive us,” he said. “They will know that Glasgow was the historic turning point when history failed to turn.”
If all goes better than the event’s organizers and international leaders expect, the summit in Glasgow could set the course for global action to combat climate change.
The event is intended to be an update to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, when 195 international leaders committed to holding rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Beyond that threshold, scientists say heat waves, floods, crop failures and wildfires will become increasingly common and deadly.
Leaders were meant to come to the summit with new, more ambitious climate targets that change the world’s current trajectory, which is heading toward roughly 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100.
Wealthy countries are also facing pressure from developing nations to fulfill a promise they made back in 2009, when the United States and others agreed that by 2020 they would provide $100 billion a year to help poor countries reduce their carbon emissions, adopt cleaner sources of fuel and adapt to the effects of climate change. So far, the wealthy countries have fallen short, and the latest estimate suggests they might not come up with the full amount until 2023.
For the next two days, Glasgow will be a speaker’s circuit of global leaders. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as the president flew from Rome to Scotland on Monday morning, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden’s speech will be a “clarion call.”
“It will be a very strong statement of his personal commitment, of our country’s commitment, not just to do our part but to help lead the world in mobilizing and catalyzing the action necessary to achieve our goals,” Sullivan said.
Once Biden and the other heads of government leave Tuesday, diplomats and delegates will set to work on negotiations on a hoped-for agreement that lays out how the world will limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. They will also try to settle disputes over financial assistance and attempt to finalize a set of rules for how countries report and claim credit for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
What they accomplish, or don’t, over the 12-day conference will be a sign of whether the unity and common resolve on display in Paris can be revived.
