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President Biden’s Global Summit with World’s Leaders on Climate Change.

The discussed actions would slow down climate change.

By DEEPAK SETHIPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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Photo courtesy Patrick Hendry Unsplash.

To commemorate the first Earth Day on 22nd April 1970, US President Richard Nixon had planted a tree in the White House Lawn. The task of the current President Joe Biden is much bigger, and he is quick up to the challenge of climate change.

President Biden invited 40 world leaders to take part in a two-day virtual gathering that commenced on April 22nd, 2021. This is just six months before the UN annual climate summit in Glasgow and involved getting more aggressive commitments from the countries to tackle the climate crisis.

How does climate change?

Climate is the weather at a place which we feel on a day-to-day basis. It may be hot one day and cold the next day. A place might be warm and dry in summer but cold and wet in winter. There is also the Earth’s climate which is when the climates all over the world are combined together.

Since the meeting was on climate change, so what really constitutes climate change? It is the change in the usual weather found at a place. This could be a change in the temperature for a season or the change in the rain pattern; a place may get more or even less rain. The same could be said about the change in Earth’s climate; which is the change in Earth’s temperature and may take hundreds or even millions of years.

Earth’s climate is always changing and there have been times when it was warmer than the present and at other times it was colder. This occurs over thousands of years. The scientists who study the earth’s climate say that the earth is getting warmer and the temperature has gone up by a Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. The small changes in temperature can have big effects like it can cause snow to melt and the oceans to rise. It can also affect the growth cycle of certain plants.

The climate is changing due to the activities of humans. This can be from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas for getting energy. This activity releases gas in the air which causes it to heat and this can change the climate in a place and the earth’s climate too.

Scientists believe that the earth’s temperature would keep going up for the next 100 years which would result in the melting of the snow and ice, thereby causing the ocean level to rise. Some places would get extremely hot while the other places would have colder winters and more snowfall. Many places would have heavy rains while other places may have scanty rainfall.

President Biden took action the first day in office, to return the United States to the Paris Agreement, and on January 27 announced that he would convene a meeting of World leader’s to galvanize efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

There is going to be a meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) this year in November in Glasgow and the discussions at this summit would become a key milestone before the meeting. The key goals of the leaders’ summit on 22nd April and again in COP26 would be to sustain efforts to sustain planetary warming to 1.5°C in order to prevent the worst impact of climate change.

What does COP 26 stand for?

COP 26 stands for Conference of the Parties and will be attended by countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — a treaty that was agreed in 1994. The meeting in 2021 will be on the 26th, so it is called COP 26.

Before this, the COP 25 was held in Madrid, Spain, in November 2019 and it finished with a lot of big unresolved issues but an agreement was made to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that would result in the reduction of global warming. At the heart of the climate discussions over the last few years is the Paris Agreement.

What is the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) on climate change mitigation, adaption, and finance signed in 2016. The agreement’s language was negotiated by representatives of 196 state parties in Paris France and adopted by consensus on 12th December 2015. The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2020 but rejoined in 2021.

The Paris agreement states that the nations must:

· Reduce the number of harmful greenhouse gasses produced and increase renewable types of energy like wind, solar, and wave power.

· Hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.

· Review progress made on the agreement every five years.

· Spend $100 billion dollars a year in climate finance to help poorer countries by 2020, with a commitment to further finance in the future.

Why the summit was held before COP 26 in November this year?

After four years of being absent from the climate negotiations, the Biden administration wanted the countries to give stronger targets before the COP26 meeting in November 2021. The summit was meant to give a signal that the US is back not only in the Paris agreement but also ready to lead international efforts.

The agreement between US President Barack Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping in 2014 had broken the political deadlock between the developing and the developed countries after the diplomatic failure of COP15 in Copenhagen.

Their agreement led to consensus in 2015 at COP21 in Paris where all the countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Biden wants to show the world that a similar breakthrough is possible at COP26, due to the cooperation between the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters.

Commitments made by the world leaders-

· President Joe Biden told in the summit that the world is in a decisive decade for tackling climate change and pledged that the US would cut carbon emissions by 50–52% below the 2005 level by the year 2030. He remarked,

“Scientists tell us that this is the decisive decade — this is the decade we must make decisions that will avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. We must try to keep the Earth’s temperature to an increase of 1.5°C. The world beyond 1.5°C means more frequent and intense fires, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and hurricanes — tearing through communities, ripping away lives and livelihoods.”

· Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said that Japan would reduce emissions by 46% by 2030 compared to 2013 levels. Previously, the country had pledged only a 26% cut in emissions, a goal that was criticized as insufficient.

· China’s President Xi Jinping re-affirmed commitment to peak emissions before 2030 and go carbon neutral by 2060.

· India is the world’s third-biggest emitter behind China and the USA. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India’s per capita emissions were 60% lower than the global average. He did not provide any new targets but reconfirmed the country’s vow to install 450 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030.

· In a change from his past attitude Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro said they would end illegal deforestation in the country by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. It has requested the Biden administration to provide $ 1 billion to pay for conservation efforts in the Amazon rainforest.

· Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country would reduce carbon pollution by 40% to 45% by 2030, an increase from Canada’s previous 30% target.

· Pope Francis made a virtual appearance and encouraged world leaders to unify in the face of climate crisis saying, “We must care for nature, so that nature may care for us.”

Gainers from the summit

President Biden has emerged as a climate champion with clear climate and energy goals. He wants the American economy to be powered by wind, solar, nuclear, and other renewables and has pledged 100 percent of America’s energy to be carbon-free by 2035.

This has been possible due to the persistent pressure from climate activists from the US and around the world. In the last few years, they have demanded that the world leaders enlarge their vision on climate protection and follow through on climate plans.

The other gainers would be the countries that are rich in tropical forests. Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bolivia had the highest rates of deforestation last year. A fund of $ 1 billion would be provided in payments to those countries that show they have prevented tropical deforestation and the associated emissions. Countries, states, or provinces in tropical forest countries would receive money after proving they reduced deforestation.

Losers from the summit

A message that came out loud and clear from the summit is that the support for coal power is declining all over the world to prevent climate change. There are 181 coal-based plants in the US and it is likely that all of them would have to be closed by 2030. The action is slower in other parts of the world like China, India, and Indonesia where the governments still continue to rely on coal as a source of fuel.

The takeaway from the meeting is clear, that the world’s major economies want to reduce emissions to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Finance would be mobilized to help vulnerable countries cope with climate impact and emphasis would be laid on technologies that help reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. This bodes well for the world as new economic opportunities would arise and lead to building industries of the future as well as keep global warming under check.

References

· https://theconversation.com/q-a-joe-bidens-earth-day-summit-what-could-it-achieve-for-action-on-climate-change-159457

·https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/22/president-biden-pledge-reduction-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions/7307038002/

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DEEPAK SETHI

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