[The opening day of a climate summit was heavy on dire warnings and light on substantive proposals as leaders in Glasgow met to discuss a warming world.]
By Jim Tankersley, Lisa Friedman and Somini Sengupta
The gathering, called in the hope
that the world could at
last agree on meaningful steps to put a rapidly warming planet back on
course, is scheduled to last nearly two weeks, but it took only hours for the
first bumps to appear.
Long-running fault lines in the
global debate over who should be the most responsible for cutting emissions
emerged in the opening speeches of the assembled heads of state. So did barbs
aimed at two major greenhouse gas emitters, China and Russia, whose
leaders did not attend. And so did the tensions between the globe’s rich
and poor, as less-developed countries demanded more aid and swifter action from
wealthier ones.
For his part, President Biden
apologized Monday for former President Donald J. Trump’s hostility
toward the global warming fight, saying it had “put us sort of behind the
eight ball.”
Addressing leaders of the more than
120 countries represented at the summit on Monday, the United Nations secretary
general, António Guterres, said the effects of a warming planet were being felt
“from the ocean depths to the mountaintops.”
“Enough of burning and drilling and
mining our way deeper,” Mr. Guterres said. “We are digging our own graves.”
Oceans are hotter than ever, parts
of the Amazon rain forest emit
more carbon than they absorb, and over the last decade about four
billion people were affected by events related to the changing climate. In the
past year alone, deadly floods
hit Germany and China, heat
waves killed nearly 200 people in the Pacific Northwest and so-called
zombie wildfires raged in the Arctic.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of
Britain compared the race to stop global warming to a spy thriller, warning
that “a red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation that will
end human life as we know it.”
“We are in roughly the same
position, my fellow global leaders, as James Bond today,” Mr. Johnson said.
“The tragedy is this is not a movie, and the doomsday device is real.”
But for all the dire warnings
Monday, there was little in the way of specific proposals about how to reduce
emissions in the immediate future.
India, which has contributed
relatively little to the world’s emissions thus far but looms as a growing
source of them, announced new targets that will keep coal at the heart of its
power sector for at least a decade. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India
would also increase its 2030 target for using renewable energy, such as solar
power.
Brazil, where deforestation is
at its highest level since 2012, announced that it would end illegal
deforestation by 2048 and cut its greenhouse emissions in half by the end of
the decade. Previously the government had agreed to cut emissions about 43
percent this decade.
John Kerry, the U.S. presidential
envoy for climate change, hailed the new target as adding “crucial momentum.”
But environmental groups dismissed the announcement as an attempt to build good
will with the United States and said the world should be skeptical about the
intentions of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.
Mr. Biden urged countries to
cooperate in the fight, emphasizing the potential creation of millions of jobs
worldwide related to lower-emission technologies.
“We’re still falling short,” Mr.
Biden said. “There is no more time to hang back or sit on the fence or argue
amongst ourselves. This is a challenge of our collective lifetime.”
The underlying tension of the
summit is the stark disconnect between what the leaders of the biggest global
warmers have so far promised and what scientists and civic leaders say must be
done.
There is also a disconnect between
what has been promised and what has been actually delivered. Leaders of
developing countries reminded the summit, for example, that poorer nations have
yet to receive the $100
billion in annual climate aid by 2020 that was once pledged.
Several leaders, among them Sheikh
Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, and Gaston Browne, the prime minister
of Antigua and Barbuda, pressed forcefully for a discussion of loss and damage.
They are, in effect, demanding reparations of a sort for countries that bear
little responsibility for the emissions warming the earth — but are already
suffering the effects.
Experts say the commitments
countries have made to reduce emissions are nowhere close to what is necessary.
And there remains a question about whether even those limited commitments can
be met.
In the United States, Mr. Biden is
struggling to deliver on his ambitious climate targets. He spent much of Monday
talking up his “Build
Back Better” climate and social policy proposals. But in fact his
administration had already been forced to abandon the centerpiece policy of
that bill — a measure that would incentivize the power sector to shift from
fossil fuels to renewable energy — because of objections by Senator Joe Manchin
III of coal-reliant West Virginia.
Mr. Biden scaled back his bill and
proposed instead spending $550 billion in tax credits for renewable energy,
electric vehicles and other efforts to fight climate change. That would have
helped get the United States halfway to Mr. Biden’s goal of cutting emissions
up to 52 percent from 2005 by the end of the decade.
Mr. Biden’s domestic struggles have
not gone unnoticed by leaders and activists all over the world, especially in
light of the U.S. history of abandoning global climate efforts, most notably
the Paris accords, which the Obama administration signed, the Trump
administration abandoned and the Biden administration rejoined.
“You know, the U.S. lost five
years,” Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives, said in an
interview.
Mr. Biden addressed the issue
directly at the summit.
“I guess I shouldn’t apologize,” he
said, “but I do apologize for the fact the United States, in the last
administration, pulled out of the Paris Accords and put us sort of behind the
eight ball.”
Mr. Nasheed, whose low-lying island
nation in the Indian Ocean is existentially
threatened by climate change-driven sea level rise, said Mr. Biden had a
higher bar to meet because of the Trump administration’s actions.
“They’ve come back again, but their
ambition must be much higher,” Mr. Nasheed said. “The United States is the
richest country on the planet. They of course have emitted more carbon than
anyone else. And there’s a historical responsibility, therefore, to make it
right.”
Activists from the United States,
too, denounced Mr. Biden’s speech.
Varshini Prakash, executive
director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate change nonprofit, called
the president’s exhortation to other nations to cut emissions “humiliating”
given his failure to pass climate legislation at home.
Mr. Biden tried to cast the United
States as a leader, and his aides sought to turn international climate ire
toward China. Briefing reporters on Air Force One, his national security
adviser, Jake Sullivan, called the Chinese “significant outliers” and said
Beijing had “an obligation to step up to greater ambition as we go forward.”
The absence at the summit of
leaders from Russia and China cast doubts on how united the world can be in the
struggle.
China, the world’s largest
greenhouse gas emitter, proposed a new emissions target that is largely
indistinguishable from one it made six years ago. Russia has not made any new
pledges to draw down climate pollution this decade.
At the United States summit
pavilion, the White House domestic climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, said she
believed the world grasped America’s legislative struggles and expressed
confidence a bill with strong climate provisions would be passed.
“I do hope they understand,” she
said. “The president wants to pass it very soon, and I think he expects it.”
