With climate agenda stalled at home, Biden still hopes to lead abroad

On his first day in office, President Biden asked the United States to join the Paris climate accord, in his inaugural address, noting that “the cry for survival comes from this very planet.” . A cry could not have been more desperate or clearer.”

He promised to focus heavily on the climate crisis at home, as well as abroad. Like the world greatest history maker on pollution that is dangerously warming the Earth, the United States will cut its emissions and lead the way to a safer future, he said.

But 18 months after taking power, Mr. Biden in the country The climate agenda is in jeopardy. And its weakened position at home makes it difficult for the United States to convince other nations to follow its lead in the battle to contain the rising heat, drought and storms that threaten every nation.

“When Biden took office, the world breathed a sigh of relief,” said Ani Dasgupta, executive director of the World Resources Institute. “Things didn’t work out that way.”

Split Congress and dissent within his own party have prevented Mr. Biden from getting the most wanted tool to cut pollution – law accelerate the replacement of coal and gas thermal power plants with wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

The war in Ukraine has rekindled global demand for fossil fuels and created a domestic political problem for Mr. Biden in the form of record gas prices, opening the door to party critics. His republic and the fossil fuel industry called for more, not less, of gas. and oil drilling.

And on Thursday, in the latest blow to Mr Biden’s climate plans, the Supreme Court ruled that would limit the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Together, these obstacles would make it nearly impossible for Mr. Biden to meet his goal of cutting emissions from the United States by about half by 2030. And it will be even harder for the US to convince other countries to do the same.

“The US domestic regulatory and legal system is making it very difficult for the Biden administration to do everything it wants to,” said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh. “It is disappointing that the United States has not shown leadership.”

Even as Mr. Biden’s domestic climate agenda falters, his climate envoy, John Kerry, continues to travel the world, trying to convince other countries to leave quickly. fossil fuels ahead of the next round of global climate negotiations, known as COP27, in Egypt this November.

“John Kerry goes around the world and says all the right things, but he can’t get the US to deliver them,” Huq said. “He discredited when he came and preached to others.”

Through a spokesman, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the Supreme Court’s decision “a setback in our fight against climate change, as we have gone too far in meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement”. Under that agreement, nearly 200 countries have promised to cut pollution to keep global warming “below” 2 degrees Celsius, relative to pre-industrial levels. If warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius, the likelihood of a climate-affecting catastrophe increases dramatically, scientists say.

The planet has warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius on average, and worldwide emissions continue to rise. Humans have burned enough oil, gas and coal to pump 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2021, more than in any previous year.

The Supreme Court decision comes during a week of President Biden’s meetings with allies in Europe – with leaders of the Group of 7 in the Bavarian Alps and then with NATO members. in Spain. At each meeting, leaders made the promise of strong climate action. But the immediate emissions reductions had consequences for efforts to shore up energy supplies across the continent and ease the pain of oil and natural gas prices caused by the war.

Many of Biden’s peers find themselves fight for leadership on climate issues.

The European Commission in May announced a scan plan to convert to renewable energy. But after shutting down nuclear power plants and finding itself squeezed by its dependence on Russian gas, Germany is looking to increase imports of liquefied natural gas. Germany, Austria and the Netherlands are temporarily promote coal power generation.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, said at a special session: “What we have seen is high oil and gas prices, and supply cuts, which to some extent have resulted in a Some countries are returning to coal. climate at the Madrid summit. “That’s bad for the climate, but of course it reflects their desperate situation.”

The United States plays a huge role in global efforts to combat climate change.

It has produced more greenhouse gases than any other country, and is home to many oil and gas companies that have been working against climate action for decades. Americans use much more energy per capita than people in other countries, a trend that shows no signs of slowing down. And climate change has become a partisan issue, with most elected Republicans questioning the need for rapid reductions in emissions.

Yet despite all of this, the United States has played an important role in mobilizing international support to tackle climate change over the past 30 years.

Starting in 1992, with the signing of the first global climate treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, US presidents and diplomats have contributed to the effort. efforts to form a unified international approach to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

“The U.S. role has been as the international coordinating architect on energy efficiency,” said Sarah Ladislaw, executive director at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit research group specializing in energy efficiency. climate change issue. “It’s also a key thinker on the strategy behind how to maintain those commitments.”

Yet U.S. policy is inconsistent, with Democratic administrations pressing for stronger climate action, and Republican administrations often backing away from the very commitments their predecessors made. designed.

Under President Bill Clinton, the United States helped design the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which dozens of countries agreed to reduce levels of seven greenhouse gases. A few years later, President George W. Bush left it.

The same dynamics echoed more recently.

In 2014, the Obama administration announced that the United States and China would work together to tackle climate change, albeit at different speeds. The following year, leading economies and developing nations came together to sign the Paris accord, where they promised to fight climate change.

Then under President Donald J. Trump, the United States became the only country to withdraw from the Paris agreement.

“America’s leadership has become stale and weakened,” said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

When Mr. Biden took office last year, he featured the United States in climate diplomacy, appointing Kerry as the first presidential climate envoy and flying to Glasgow to appeal to world leaders Other worlds take action at the United Nations climate conference in November.

In Glasgow, the US helped secure a number of new efforts to help tackle global warming, including Global Energy Alliance, Global Financial Union and a commitment of more than 100 countries to cut methane emissions.

“The critical global coordination to solve the world’s toughest problems simply cannot happen,” said Raj Shah, executive director of the Rockefeller Foundation and head of USAID under President Obama. without American leadership. “That’s true of the food crisis, and that’s true of the climate.”

Mr. Shah added: “There are many significant setbacks to the climate agenda, and the international diplomacy aspect is one that gives me hope. “All of these are creating real momentum.”

More recently, the Biden administration has worked to develop partnership between the public and private sectors to encourage large companies to purchase more eco-friendly versions of products such as aluminum and steel that are responsible for significant emissions.

However, after the policy shock of the past six years, the rest of the world is anxiously watching the midterm elections in the fall and beyond.

“There is a lot of concern that there could be another Trump presidency or a Trump-like presidency,” Kyte said. “That really weighs on the rest of the world.”

Ramón Cruz, president of the Sierra Club, said the indication to restore American leadership was clear.

“The United States can maintain the credibility that President Biden has sought to rebuild if his administration and Democrats in Congress deliver on the climate commitments they have made,” he said. . “President Biden must use every tool at his disposal to tackle the climate crisis and show the world that America is a leader.”

Scientists are releasing The warning is getting more and more serious about the risks of continuing to burn fossil fuels, and globally, the extreme weather, heat waves, fires, droughts and rapid changes to the climate are causing successive waves of human suffering.

“New funding for fossil fuel exploration and production infrastructure is an illusion,” said Guterres, United Nations secretary general, Written on Twitter this week. “Fossil fuels are not the answer. Renewable energy is. “

For now, however, despite their lofty commitments, the major industrialized nations – including the United States and European countries – are showing little capacity to take the kind of swift action that they may not have. Scientists say it’s necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

“The whole world is like a junkie addicted to fossil fuels,” Mr. Huq said. “Now that the Russians have turned it off, instead of detoxing it themselves, they are trying to find it elsewhere. We are going backwards rather than forward.”

Jim Tankersley Contribution reports from Madrid and

Lisa Friedman contribution report.