• Thursday, 21 November 2024

Biden stresses US global climate leadership at Egypt meeting

Biden stresses US global climate leadership at Egypt meeting
Sharm el-Sheikh, 11 November 2022 (dpa/MIA) – US President Joe Biden on Friday asserted his country's leading role in curbing global warming at a major climate conference in Egypt, and urged other nations to rise to the challenge. Biden said he was keen to re-establish the US - one of the world's top emitters - as a "trustworthy and committed global leader" on climate. "As I stand here before you, we’ve taken enormous strides to achieve that," Biden told delegates at the UN climate conference, known as COP27, under way in Egypt's coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. He said his administration had taken "unprecedented steps" in the past two years to address the climate crisis. He highlighted the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the US Congress in August, which included around $370 billion in climate change investments over the next 10 years. Last year, Biden set an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% in 2030 from 2005 levels. In his speech on Friday, Biden said the global fight against climate change must be accelerated. "The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national security and the very life of the planet." "At this gathering, we must renew and raise our climate ambitions," Biden said. Biden announced that the US, Germany and the European Union are supporting energy transition in the host nation Egypt with financial aid of $500 million. This should enable the North African country to achieve an output of 10 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030. Biden arrived earlier Friday in Sharm el-Sheikh on a short visit, days after dozens of world leaders gathered in the Red Sea resort for a summit parallel to the COP27 talks that opened on Sunday. Representatives from around 200 countries are grappling at the COP27 conference with how global warming can still be contained and how climate damage can be financed. The two weeks of meetings are taking place amid multiple crises, including food and energy shortages and rising inflation in economies across the world - exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden’s stop at Sharm el-Sheikh is the first leg in a tour that is also taking him to a gathering of South-East Asian nations in Cambodia and a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 on the Indonesian island of Bali. The COP27 conference has been touted as an event of action with increasing calls for governments to fulfil their previous pledges to address global warming. Several countries responsible for more than half of the global gross domestic product launched a 12-month action plan on Friday to make clean technologies cheaper and more accessible. Dubbed the "Breakthrough Agenda," the plan was unveiled on the COP27 sidelines by an alliance including the Group of Seven economic powers, the European Commission, India and Egypt, among others. The aim is to accelerate decarbonization of sectors of power generation, road transport, steel, hydrogen and agriculture.