Biden invites Russia and China to the first global climate talks

The president is seeking to revive a climate forum held by the United States for the world’s major economies, which was used by George W. Bush and Barack Obama and left Donald Trump weak. Leaders of some of the world’s biggest climate change sufferers, philanthropists and retirees completed the remaining 40 invitations delivered on Friday. It will be held approximately on April 22nd and 23rd.

Hosting the summit will fulfill the campaign pledge and executive order by Biden, and the administration has anticipated the timing of the event to coincide with its upcoming announcement of what will be a tougher US target for reforming the US economy to sharply cut emissions from natural coal. Gas and oil.

The session will test – and whether full talk or some progress – Biden’s pledge to make climate change a priority between competing political, economic, political and pandemic problems. It would also be a very public test – and perhaps embarrassing or empowering – of whether US leaders, and Biden in particular, can still lead global decision-making after the Trump administration withdraws globally and shakes up long-standing alliances.

An administration official said the Biden administration has intentionally looked beyond its international partners at the summit and reached out to key leaders in what it said would be sometimes difficult conversations on climate matters. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss US plans for this event.

Trump mocked the science behind urgent warnings about global warming and the resulting worsening of droughts, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters. He withdrew the United States from the 2015 UN Paris climate accords as one of his first actions. That makes next month’s summit the first major international climate debate for a US leader in more than four years, although leaders in Europe and elsewhere continue to talk.

US officials and others are giving some credit to the Obama administration’s discussions of the major economies ’climate to lay the groundwork for the Paris Agreement. In those talks, the United States and nearly 200 other governments set targets for cutting fossil fuel emissions, and pledged to monitor and report their emissions. Another Biden administration official said the United States was still deciding how far the administration would go in setting a more ambitious U.S. emissions target.

The Biden administration hopes that the stage provided by the Earth Day Climate Summit next month – which is planned to be entirely virtual due to COVID-19 and can be viewed publicly on live broadcasts, including separate talks – will encourage other international leaders to use it as a platform to announce themselves. Tougher countries’ emissions targets or other commitments, ahead of the UN global climate talks in November in Glasgow.

The official said the administration more broadly hopes the session will show a commitment to reducing emissions at home and encouraging them abroad. This includes encouraging governments to move forward in specific, politically affordable ways to re-equip the transportation, energy, and overall economies now to meet those stricter future goals, something that the Biden administration has just embarked on.

Like the major Bush and Obama economic climate forum, Biden’s call list includes leaders of the world’s largest economies and European conglomerates. This includes two countries – Russia and China – against which Biden and his diplomats clash over election interference, cyberattacks, human rights, and other issues. It is not clear how these two countries in particular will respond to calls from the United States, or whether they are willing to cooperate with the United States on emissions cuts while arguing over other issues. China is the world’s largest source of climate-damaging pollution. The United States is No. 2. Russia is No. 4.

Climate scientists and climate policy experts have greatly welcomed Biden’s international initiative on climate negotiations, particularly the engagement with China.

China is by far the largest emitter in the world. Russia needs to do more to reduce its emissions. Nigel Purvis, who worked in climate diplomacy in former Democratic and Republican administrations, said not including these countries because they are not doing enough would be tantamount to launching an anti-smoking campaign but not directing it to smokers.

Ideally, government leaders in China and other major economies will look for opportunities to talk about specific issues, such as whether broad agreement can be reached on setting any price for carbon emissions, said Bob Inglis, a former Republican lawmaker working to engage conservatives and Conservative approaches to climate efforts. “That’s why this type of communication makes sense.”

Brazil is on the list as a major economy, but it is also a major factor in the climate downturn under President Jair Bolsonaro, who derailed efforts to preserve the carbon-absorbing Amazon and joined Trump in crushing international climate commitments.

The 40 invitees also include leaders of countries facing some of the most immediate threats, including the lowlands of Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands, countries seen as models of some good climate behavior, including Bhutan and some Scandinavia, and African countries that have large forests. Carbon sink. Or large oil reserves. Some argue that Poland and some of the other countries on the list are open to moving faster away from dirty coal power.

Biden as a candidate has pledged to invest $ 2 trillion to help transform the United States into a zero-emissions economy by 2050 while building clean energy jobs and technology. Biden and other administration officials emphasized US climate intentions during direct talks with foreign leaders, and Biden climate envoy John Kerry focused on diplomacy abroad to spur climate efforts.

Biden discussed the summit in a conversation on Friday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in which the two leaders agreed on the need to keep emissions reduction targets ambitious, the White House said.