The ambitious carbon reduction targets announced at Washington’s virtual climate summit are equal parts aspiration and political strategy. Pledging to cut US emissions to half of their 2005 levels within a decade, President Biden called action on climate change “a moral imperative” that could not be postponed. That may be so, but his impassioned rhetoric also helps the president to push his rivals further into a corner after securing 2 trillion dollars in Covid-relief and proposing a similar amount in infrastructure renewal. The first measure relied solely on Democratic legislators while the second remains hanging in the balance of a divided Senate.
There is no question that climate change is a crisis that could easily become a catastrophe. Recent research shows that in just the last 30 years, melting glaciers have shifted the Earth’s axis of rotation. In that time our north and south poles have been displaced by nearly 4 metres. This is due not only to changing weather but also to the fact that humans have extracted 18 trillion tonnes of groundwater from underground reservoirs without replacing it. If half a century of human activity can have such consequences, it is not hard to see why climate activists view the current situation with mounting alarm.
In 2020, the reduction in travel caused by the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a 10 percent fall in global emissions. As economies reopen, however, these will soon surpass pre-pandemic levels unless nations agree on aggressive carbon reduction goals. Biden’s speech acknowledged the need for collaboration: “No nation can solve this crisis on our own. All of us, and particularly those of us that represent the world’s largest economies, we have to step up.” But with his own plan subject to the horse trading, or lack of it, which derailed so many of Obama’s ambitions, the US president knows that his goals are more of a hope than an expectation and that all of them could easily be abandoned by a Republican successor.
The scale and complexity of the political challenges ahead were evident in the range of promises that followed Biden’s ambitious targets. China will reach peak coal emissions by 2030 and seek net-zero emissions by 2060; India aims to have 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by next year, 450GW by the end of the decade. Canada pledged a 40 to 45 percent reduction below 2005 levels. The UK aimed for 80 percent reductions from its 1990 levels by 2035. The EU has approved a trillion-dollar plan to move its 27 nations to climate-neutral emissions levels by 2050. Every one of these commitments is praiseworthy, but none will mean anything unless and until there are interlocking agreements that guarantee a framework that transcends the election cycles of the countries involved.
The urgency caused by previous political uncertainties was noticeable in Biden’s goals. These almost doubled Obama’s commitments in the Paris accords. As Biden’s extraordinary record in rolling out Covid vaccinations has shown, Americans admire leaders who don’t shy away from hard targets and nothing succeeds like success.
Countries like ours could play significant roles the future that Biden envisages. Washington’s recently published 24-page International Climate Finance Plan sets out a “whole of government approach” to carbon reduction and prioritises the “collective goal of mobilizing $100 billion per year for developing countries from a wide variety of public and private sources.” More detailed plans are expected at the Glasgow Climate Change Conference in November. If ever there was a time to hold the US to its promises that climate change offers “one of the greatest opportunities in history for innovation, sustainable economic growth, and the creation of high-quality jobs” it is now.
