1 climate polluter, held out the possibility in his summit speech of moving faster to slow China’s building of new coal-fired power plants. throws,” said Alice Hill, a senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Nations still want to come to the party that the U.S. over nonclimate issues.īut they did, despite concerns that international isolation and domestic political conflict under Trump had weakened the United States.
Publicly, there had been no firm word up until this week that Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia would accept Biden’s summit invite, given disputes with the U.S. coal and petroleum emissions in half by 2030, nearly doubling the previous target. Biden used the summit to announce he intended to cut U.S. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark renewed her country’s pledge to end oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, switching from offshore oil and gas rigs to wind farms.īiden convened the summit showcasing the United States’ own high-profile return to international climate efforts after President Donald Trump’s withdrawal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, described scientists at hundreds of Israeli start-ups working to improve crucial battery storage for solar, wind and other renewable energy. Opposition has stalled work on what would be its first dirtier-burning coal-fired power plant. Small solar panels that charge lights and mobile phones have become cheap enough for some poor households to replace their kerosene lanterns. It has become a leading user and producer of geothermal and wind power. His closing message echoed the sentiments of Kenyan President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, who told the summit: “We cannot win this fight against climate change unless we go globally to fight it together.”Ĭompared to the United States and other wealthy but carbon-addicted nations, Kenya stands out as a poorer country closing the technology gap despite limited financial resources. “We’re gonna do this together,” Biden said, speaking live to a final Zoom-style screen of leaders of national governments, unions and business executives around the world. “Commitment without doing anything is a lot of hot air, no pun intended.” “The commitments we’ve made must become real,” declared Biden, who is seeking $2.3 trillion from Congress for legislation that would partly go for electric charging stations, for laying out an efficient new national electrical grid and for capping abandoned oil and gas rigs and coal mines. and a half-dozen allies commit to significant new efforts and financing to reduce climate-damaging emissions.įriday’s closing message: Go forth and spend, making good on pledges for rapid transitions to cleaner vehicles, power grids and buildings to stave off the worst of global warming. Biden’s two-day gathering briefly united the heads of global rivals America, China and Russia - on screens, anyway - long enough to pledge cooperation on climate. It was an exhortational end to an unusual pandemic-era summit hosted from a specially created TV-style set in the White House East Room. Other images from the event published by media outlets show world leaders, such as Argentinian President Alberto Fernández, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Prime Minister of Bhutan Lotay Tshering, donned face masks at various points.WASHINGTON (AP) - World leaders shared tales of climate-friendly breakthroughs - and feverish quests for more - to close President Joe Biden’s virtual global climate summit on Friday, from Kenyans abandoning kerosene lanterns for solar to Israeli start-ups straining for more efficient storage batteries. While Biden is the only leader visible wearing a face mask in that particular screen grab, other images from the summit show he was not the only leader to wear one. (RELATED: Does This Image Show Joe Biden In D.C. “Biden was the only world leader wearing a mask on a Zoom call.
Similar claims also circulated on Twitter. In the days following the climate change summit, Facebook users shared a screen grab from a livestream of the event that appears to show Biden as the only world leader donning a face mask. The virtual summit, which took place April 22 and 23, was live-streamed for public viewing. The White House announced in March that Biden invited 40 world leaders to attend a virtual summit to discuss climate change in April.
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