The United States will hold a climate summit of the world’s major economies early next year, within 100 days of President-elect Joe Biden taking office, and seek to rejoin the United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement on the first day of his presidency, in a boost to international climate action.
Leaders from 75 countries met without the US in a virtual Climate Action Summit co-hosted by the UN, the United Kingdom and France at the weekend, marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement.
The Guardian reports the absence of the US underlined the need for more countries, including other major economies such as Australia, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia, to make fresh commitments on tackling the climate crisis.
Mr Biden said in a statement: “I’ll immediately start working with my counterparts around the world to do all that we possibly can, including by convening the leaders of major economies for a climate summit within my first 100 days in office.
“We’ll elevate the incredible work cities, states and businesses have been doing to help reduce emissions and build a cleaner future.
“We’ll listen to and engage closely with the activists, including young people, who have continued to sound the alarm and demand change from those in power.”
He reiterated his pledge to put the US on a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and said the move would be good for the Us economy and workers.
“We’ll do all of this knowing that we have before us an enormous economic opportunity to create jobs and prosperity at home and export clean American-made products around the world.”
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said: “It is a very important signal.
“We look forward to a very active US leadership in climate action from now on as US leadership is absolutely essential.
“The US is the largest economy in the world, it’s absolutely essential for our goals to be reached.”
The Guardian reports President Donald Trump, whose withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement took effect on the day after the US election in November, shunned the Climate Ambition Summit.
Countries including Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico were excluded as they had failed to commit to climate targets in line with the Paris Agreement.
Australia’s conservative Liberal-National prime minister, Scott Morrison, had sought to join the summit but his commitments were judged inadequate, and an announcement from Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, of a net zero target just before the summit was derided as lacking credibility.
The Climate Ambition Summit failed to produce a major breakthrough, but more than 70 countries gave further details of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an aspirational 1.5°C limit.
Alok Sharma, the UK’s business secretary, who will preside over UN climate talks called COP26 next year, said much more action was needed.
“People will ask: have we done enough to put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5°C and protect people and nature from the effects of climate change?
“We must be honest with ourselves, the answer to that is currently no,” he said.
The Guardian reports when President-elect Biden’s pledge to bring the US to net zero emissions by 2050 is included, countries accounting for more than two-thirds of global emissions are subject to net zero targets around mid-century, including the European Union, the UK, Japan and South Korea.
China has pledged to meet net zero by 2060, and a large number of smaller developing countries have also embraced the goal.
The task for the next year, before the COP26 conference in Glasgow next November, will be to encourage all the world’s remaining countries, including oil-dependent economies such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, to sign up to long-term net zero targets, and to ensure that all countries also have detailed plans for cutting emissions within the next decade.
Those detailed national plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are the bedrock of the Paris Agreement, setting out emissions curbs by 2030.
Current NDCs, submitted in 2015, would lead to more than 3.0°C of warming, all countries must submit fresh plans in line with a long-term goal of net zero emissions.
The US will be closely watched for its plans.
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