US to galvanize global 'ambition' on climate: officials
GLASGOW, United Kingdom — The United States is back to leading the world on fighting climate change and President Joe Biden will use a UN summit in Glasgow to energize partners, US officials said.
Special climate envoy John Kerry told reporters ahead of Biden's arrival on Monday at the COP26 summit that the aim is "to leave Glasgow having raised global ambition very significantly and to be more on track to keep a 1.5 degrees within reach".
Biden is set on Monday to address COP26, which is tasked with trying to maintain a global bid to restrict average temperature rises to 1.5C, preventing what scientists say will be an ever more destructive climate crisis.
He will also attend the summit on Tuesday before flying home.
Kerry highlighted a "very strong" US delegation at the two-week summit, including 10 cabinet secretaries and agency heads, and more than 50 members of Congress.
"This is a message you're going to see from the president over the next two days and from dozens of cabinet officials who will be in Glasgow over the next two weeks: the United States is back at the table, we're back, hoping to rally the world to tackle the climate crisis," climate adviser Gina McCarthy told reporters.
Pushing back against criticism that COP26 is getting off to a weak start, with only lukewarm action on that 1.5C goal from countries at a G20 summit in Rome at the weekend, Kerry said nations representing 65 percent of global GDP are committed to the effort.
Nine months ago, when Biden took office, "there were only two or three entities, very few, who were on track to try to hold 1.5 degrees," he said.
The other third of countries not fully on board are "the challenge coming out of Glasgow", he said. "Can those countries step up?"
He called agreement at the G20 in Rome on Sunday to end public financing for coal production abroad "a major breakthrough".
Call for more oil
Kerry defended Biden's recent calls for increased oil production, saying this is a temporary response to energy shortages, and does not clash with broader climate goals.
Biden has been pushing the oil industry to counter rising energy prices for ordinary Americans by ramping up production. Similar shortages and price hikes have hit Europe.
"If he were asking them to boost their production over five years, I'd quit," Kerry said. "But he's not. He's asking them to boost production in this immediate moment."
Biden's climate pointman said that getting through the current energy crunch is important if governments are going to be able to carry public opinion in the transition to clean energy.
"If life is so miserable... and prices go up and other things happen, you're going to lose, I think it becomes more challenging to get the job done," he said.
"We're all trying to facilitate the transition. And as the transition cuts in, there won't be that need," he said. "So I just don't think it's inconsistent to say you're going to have a temporary capacity booster (to) keep the economy moving."
Bookmark this page for updates on the United Nations climate summit, known as COP26. Photo courtesy of AFP/Tolga Akmen
Singapore announces it aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, giving a firm date for the first time, and will look at using hydrogen as a major power source.
The city-state targets for carbon emissions to peak in 2030 at 60 million tonnes, a reduction of five million tonnes from the previous goal, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said.
The Southeast Asian nation also has plans to look at developing low carbon hydrogen as a major power supply in the long term. — AFP
Australia will present a more ambitious UN emissions target "very soon" and is bidding to co-host a COP summit with Pacific island neighbours, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Thursday, signalling a ground shift in climate policy.
During a first solo overseas visit since her centre-left government was sworn in, Wong admitted that on the climate, "Australia has neglected its responsibility" under past administrations.
She told hosts in Fiji's capital Suva that there would be no more "disrespecting" Pacific nations or "ignoring" their calls to act on climate change.
"We were elected on a platform of reducing emissions by 43 percent by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2050," Wong said. — AFP
Countries have proposed to hold an extra biodiversity meeting in Nairobi in June as talks in Geneva tasked with saving nature entered their final day Tuesday without an agreement.
In a document uploaded on the conference website, dated Monday, countries suggest holding a new meeting in the Kenyan capital between June 21 and 26 to "continue negotiations" on the document and other issues.
The decision is subject to official approval by the Geneva meeting before it wraps up later Tuesday. — AFP
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday hails a global accord to speed up action against climate change as "truly historic" and "the beginning of the end for coal power".
But he says his "delight at this progress" at the UN COP26 summit in Glasgow was "tinged with disappointment" because of a failure to secure the agreement of all countries to phase out hydrocarbons.
"Those for whom climate change is already a matter of life and death, who can only stand by as their islands are submerged, their farmland turned to desert, their homes battered by storms, they demanded a high level of ambition from this summit," says Johnson. — AFP
A UN climate summit text on Saturday urges nations to accelerate the phase-out of unfiltered coal and "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies, after large emitters tried to remove the mention of polluting fuels.
The text, which comes after two weeks of frantic negotiations at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, omitted any reference to specific finance for "loss and damage" -- the mounting cost of global heating so far -- which has been a key demand of poorer nations.
The mention on Saturday of fossil fuels was weaker than a previous draft, which called on countries to "accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels". — AFP
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