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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, ApRIl 24, 2021
‘We’re gonna do this together’
President Biden closes
global summit on climate
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER,
CHRISTINA LARSON
and MATTHEW DALY
Associated press
WASHINGTON D.C. — World leaders
joined President Joe Biden on Friday to close
his virtual climate summit with stories of
their own national drives to break free of cli-
mate-wrecking fossil fuels — Kenyans leap-
frogging from kerosene stoves to geother-
mal power and Israeli start-ups scrambling to
improve battery storage.
“We’re gonna do this together,” Biden
exhorted, speaking live to a Zoom-style
screen of leaders of national governments,
unions and business executives around the
world.
Biden’s closing message echoed the sen-
timents of Kenyan President Uhuru Muigai
Kenyatta, who told the summit: “We cannot
win this fight against climate change unless
we go globally to fight it together.”
The second and final day of Biden’s sum-
mit of 40 world leaders made the case for
massive investment now — in the U.S. and
around the world — for prosperous as well as
cleaner economies in the long run.
Compared with the United States and
other wealthy but carbon-dependent nations,
Kenya stands out as a poorer nation clos-
ing the technology gap despite limited finan-
cial resources. It has moved in decades from
dirty-burning coal, kerosene and wood fires to
become a leading user and producer of geo-
thermal energy, wind and solar power, all
aided by mobile-phone banking.
The summit’s opening on Thursday saw
a half-dozen nations, including the United
States, pledge specific, significant new
efforts to cut emissions. Other summit speak-
ers, including Chinese President Xi Jinping,
whose country is the world’s top climate pol-
luter, held out the possibility of deepening
their commitments, in China’s case by easing
back on building of coal-fired plants.
Biden’s own pledge, nearly doubling the
U.S. target for cutting emissions from coal
and petroleum this decade, depends on his
keeping political support from voters and
securing more than $2 trillion for a nation-
wide infrastructure overhaul.
“The commitments we’ve made must
become real,” Biden said Friday, speaking
to the home audience as much as the interna-
tional one. “Commitment without doing any-
thing is a lot of hot air, no pun intended.”
Evan Vucci/AP Photo
President Joe Biden speaks to the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate from the East Room of
the White House on Friday.
REPUBLICANS ARE STICKING TO THE ARGUMENTS
THAT THEN-PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP MADE IN
PULLING THE U.S. OUT OF THE 2015 PARIS CLIMATE
ACCORD. THEY POINT TO CHINA AS THE WORLD’S
WORST CLIMATE POLLUTER — THE U.S. IS NO. 2 —
AND SAY ANY TRANSITION TO CLEAN ENERGY HURTS
AMERICAN OIL, NATURAL GAS AND COAL WORKERS.
He wondered aloud if there was “any-
thing else you can think of that could create as
many good jobs going into the 21st century.”
The coronavirus pandemic forced the sum-
mit into its virtual format, with a TV talk
show-style set created in the White House
East Room. Cabinet secretaries stepped in
as emcees to keep the livestreamed action
moving.
It was all in service of an argument officials
say will make or break Biden’s climate vision:
Pouring trillions of dollars into clean-energy
technology, research and infrastructure will
speed a competitive U.S. economy into the
future and create jobs while saving the planet.
While technological development and
wider use has helped make wind and solar
power strongly competitive against coal and
natural gas in the U.S., Biden said investment
also would bring forward thriving, clean-en-
ergy fields “in things we haven’t even thought
of so far.”
Republicans are sticking to the arguments
that then-President Donald Trump made in
pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate
accord. They point to China as the world’s
worst climate polluter — the U.S. is No. 2 —
and say any transition to clean energy hurts
American oil, natural gas and coal workers.
It means “putting good-paying Ameri-
can jobs into the shredder,” Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican from
Kentucky, said on the Senate floor Thursday
in a speech in which he dismissed the admin-
istration’s plans as costly and ineffective.
Much of the proposed spending to address
climate change is included in Biden’s infra-
structure bill, which would pay for new roads,
safe bridges and reliable public transit, while
boosting electric vehicles, clean drinking
water and investments in clean energy such as
solar and wind power.
Biden’s plan faces a steep road in the
closely divided Senate, where Republicans
led by McConnell have objected strongly
to the idea of paying for much of it with tax
increases on corporations.
The White House says administration offi-
cials will continue to reach out to Republi-
cans and will remind them that the proposal’s
ideas are widely popular with Americans of
all political persuasions.
Friday also featured billionaires Bill Gates
and Mike Bloomberg, steelworker and electri-
cal union leaders and executives for solar and
other renewable energy.
“We can’t beat climate change without
a historic amount of new investment,” said
Bloomberg, who has spent heavily to pro-
mote replacing dirty-burning coal-fired power
plants with increasingly cheaper renewable
energy.
Biden envoy John Kerry stressed the polit-
ical selling point that the president’s call for
retrofitting creaky U.S. infrastructure to run
more cleanly would put the U.S. on a better
economic footing long-term. “No one is being
asked for a sacrifice,” Kerry said. “This is an
opportunity.”
Global leaders described their own invest-
ments and commitments to break away from
reliance on climate-damaging petroleum and
coal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
described scientists at hundreds of Israeli
start-ups working to improve crucial battery
storage for solar, wind and other renewable
energy. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of
Denmark renewed her country’s pledge to
end oil and gas exploration in the North Sea,
switching from offshore oil and gas rigs to
wind farms.
On the summit’s opening day Thursday,
Biden pledged the U.S. will cut fossil fuel
emissions as much as 52% by 2030. South
Korea, Japan, Canada and South Africa also
joined in specific new emissions efforts timed
to the summit.
Biden’s new goal puts the United States
among the most ambitious nations in curbing
climate change, the Rhodium Group, an inde-
pendent research organization, announced
overnight.
Different nations use different base years
for their emission cuts so comparisons are dif-
ficult and can look different based on base-
line years. The Rhodium Group said using
the U.S.-preferred 2005 baseline, America is
behind the United Kingdom but right with the
European Union. It’s ahead of a second tier
of countries including Canada, Japan, Iceland
and Norway.
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