President Biden invited 40 world leaders to live-streamed summit on Earth Day

From an Article in the Independent News of Great Britain, April 16, 2021

President Joe Biden has asked 40 world leaders to a virtual two-day summit to ramp up efforts in tackling the climate emergency, beginning on Earth Day.

Invitations have gone out to leaders of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which total about 80 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis, already facing more extreme weather and rising sea levels, have also been invited along with a number of nations championing climate action.

The list includes Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a signal that the US is willing to put the climate crisis above even its most strained international relations. President Xi is expected to attend, according to a report, while Mr Putin remains a question mark.

For its part, the US is expected to announce a tougher 2030 emissions-reduction target ahead of the summit. The “nationally determined contribution” (NDC), as it’s known, is each nation’s short-term pledge on emissions and a required part of the Paris Agreement.

The New York Times reported this week that ahead of the summit, the Biden administration was close to clinching tougher emissions reduction promises from Japan, South Korea and Canada. But deals had not yet been reached with China, India and Brazil who, along with the US, account for more than half of global emissions.

Some global leaders have publicly confirmed they will attend Mr Biden’s summit, seen as a key milestone ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP26, in Glasgow this November.

Among those who have confirmed their attendance: Prime Minister Gaston Browne, Antigua and Barbuda; President Alberto Fernandez, Argentina; Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh; President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil; President Sebastián Piñera, Chile; President Xi Jinping, China; President Iván Duque Márquez, Colombia; President Félix Tshisekedi, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Denmark; President Ali Bongo Ondimba, Gabon; Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India; President David Kabua, Republic of the Marshall Islands; President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico; Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Norway; President Andrzej Duda, Poland; President Moon Jae-in, Republic of Korea; Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore; Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain; Prime Minister Boris Johnson, United Kingdom.

Also on the list but yet to publicly confirm are: Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia; Prime Minister Lotay Tshering, Bhutan; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada; President Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission; President Charles Michel, European Council; President Emmanuel Macron, France; Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany; President Joko Widodo, Indonesia; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel; Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Italy; Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Jamaica; Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Japan; President Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya; Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand; President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria; President Vladimir Putin, Russia; King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa; President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey; President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, United Arab Emirates; President Nguyễn Phú Trọng, Vietnam

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See also: Biden’s Earth Day Summit Is a Crucial Opportunity for Climate Action, Rachel Cleetus & Erika Spanger-Siegfried, Scientific American, April 14, 2021

The president should commit to cutting U.S. emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Joe Biden is upfront with appointees and intentions

From an Article by Dino Grandoni and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, January 15, 2021

President-elect Joe Biden added more than a half-dozen climate staffers to his White House team Thursday, drawing from the ranks of green groups, environmental justice advocates and former Democratic administration officials to grow an inner circle that will help him try to slash the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The new hires include David J. Hayes, who served as Interior deputy secretary under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; Cecilia Martinez, a prominent environmental justice advocate based in Minneapolis who advised the transition team; and Stef Feldman, a top Biden campaign aide who helped craft his climate plan. They will work with several incoming Cabinet officials new to Biden’s orbit, including North Carolina environmental regulator Michael S. Regan, picked to run the Environmental Protection Agency, and Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), set to serve as interior secretary.

The incoming White House team — which also includes former secretary of state John F. Kerry and former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, along with Obama administration veterans in the National Security Council and the White House Counsel’s Office — represents the most robust climate-focused group assembled in the West Wing.

“These qualified, diverse and experienced appointees share the president and vice president-elect’s view that there is no greater challenge facing our country and our world than climate change,” the transition team said in a statement. “From marshaling every part of our government, working directly with communities, and harnessing the forces of science these appointees will be instrumental in utilizing all the tools at the incoming administration’s disposal to address climate change head on.”

Biden, set to take office in less than a week, will try to execute a far-reaching strategy to embed climate action across government agencies and in legislation on Capitol Hill. He has also pledged to address the disproportionate pollution burden carried by poor and minority neighborhoods.

In a recent interview, John Podesta, who helped spearhead Obama’s second-term climate agenda as senior counselor to the president, noted that Biden has assembled more expertise on the subject than any of his predecessors. Podesta said, the president-elect is building out the White House staff on both the international and domestic sides. “It shows how central climate change is to Biden’s foreign and security policy, just as it is to his domestic and economic policy,” he said.

Biden wants to ban all new drilling on public lands and waters. There are multiple reasons why that will be hard to do.

Martinez will play a major role in tackling pollution disparities as senior director for environmental justice at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

In an interview in July, Martinez said addressing the acute impact poor and minority neighborhoods often face from pollution needs to be “a central focus of CEQ.”

The Biden administration’s initiative on environmental justice “needs to really have some teeth to it so that the different federal agencies not only develop their plans and collaborate, but there is accountability,” she added.

David J. Hayes, a former deputy secretary of the Interior under the Obama administration, will be Biden’s special assistant for climate policy.

Martinez is a newcomer to Washington but the new lineup includes some longtime bureaucratic veterans such as Hayes, who will serve as special assistant to the president for climate policy. Hayes spearheaded Interior’s renewable energy development plans and its efforts to address climate change impacts in the Arctic under Obama, before joining the New York School of Law’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center. From that perch, he helped organize several legal challenges by Democratic attorneys general to the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.

Maggie Thomas, a former climate adviser to two of Biden’s former rivals for the presidency, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), will serve as chief of staff in the Office of Domestic Climate Policy.

Thomas helped found a green group, Evergreen Action, which pushed Democrats to adopt pieces of Inslee’s comprehensive climate plan and lent policy chops to the burgeoning youth climate movement.

Feldman, a longtime Biden aide who started as his policy intern when he was vice president and rose to become his 2020 campaign’s policy director, will serve as deputy assistant to Biden.

During the presidential race, she helped get the buy-in of young climate activists, union leaders, environmental justice advocates and former Democratic rivals when writing Biden’s proposal to eliminate carbon pollution from the electric sector by 2035 and to spend $2 trillion over four years to boost clean energy.

Jeff Marootian, who directs the D.C. Department of Transportation, will also join the White House and help oversee future hires as special assistant to the president for climate and science agency personnel.
In recent days, Biden has also announced the return to the White House of two Obama-era officials who worked on energy and climate issues: Melanie Nakagawa, a former aide to Kerry at the State Department, and Megan Ceronsky, a former special assistant and associate counsel to Obama.

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See also: UN urges nations to scale up climate change adaptation to avoid major economic loss, Emma Newburger, CNBC News, January 14, 2021