Biden Brings ‘Trust Us’ Pitch to Skeptics at UN Climate Summit

(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden joins other world leaders in Scotland on Monday for a United Nations summit on climate change without the signed-and-sealed budget agreement he was counting on from Congress to quiet skeptics of U.S. commitment.

That leaves him facing the tall task of parlaying a handshake commitment from American lawmakers to spend $555 billion fighting global warming into tangible action by fellow heads of state in Glasgow. And with major obstacles still to come for the draft legislation Biden unveiled on Thursday -- including votes in the House and Senate -- it still amounts to a message of “trust us.” 

“The U.S. talks a big game on climate change, but they just haven’t delivered,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group. “From the international perspective, the United States is treated skeptically.” 

To be sure, the framework agreement Biden hammered out with congressional Democrats would be historic in its cost and sweep. It would, among other things, expand incentives for the use of solar power and electric vehicles while putting hundreds of thousands of Americans to work in a Civilian Climate Corps to cap abandoned oil wells and make homes more energy efficient. Biden boasted Thursday that if enacted, the plan -- which would be the largest investment to combat the climate crisis in U.S. history -- would reduce U.S. emissions well over a gigaton by 2030.

Yet it remains a draft proposal despite months of negotiations, and that carries the risk of consigning Glasgow to a long line of broken or half-fulfilled U.S. promises on climate, from the Senate’s failure to ratify the Kyoto treaty to the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement to a failure -- so far -- to deliver billions pledged to help developing nations address climate change.

White House officials argue that other leaders are savvy enough to understand that the legislative process is messy, and progress in the negotiations -- coupled with the White House’s regulatory actions -- are indication enough that the administration will accomplish meaningful change. 

“I think you’ve got a sophisticated set of world leaders who understand politics in their own country, and understand American democracy, and recognize that working through a complex, far-reaching negotiation on some of the largest investments in modern memory in the United States -- that that takes time,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday.

In another lesson in American democracy, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider an appeal by coal companies to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to curb greenhouse gases from power plants. That could be a setback to Biden’s plans to use regulation to combat emissions, above and beyond any legislation he’s able to get passed.

Progress Without Paris

Meanwhile, at the G-20 summit over the weekend, leaders failed to reach agreement on a provision sought by some nations to phase out the domestic use of coal, which accounts for around 44% of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Biden singled out Russia and China at the conclusion of the G-20 gathering in Rome for failing to make stronger commitments to combat climate change or to send their leaders to key global meetings to address the crisis. 

“There’s a reason why people should be disappointed that I found it disappointing myself,” Biden said. “It’s going to require us to continue to focus on what China’s not doing what Russia is not doing or what Saudi Arabia is not doing.”

Administration officials who requested anonymity to discuss plans for the Glasgow meeting said that they’ll find other ways of arguing that the U.S. can -- and will -- fulfill its Paris agreement pledge to pare the country’s greenhouse gas emissions 50% to 52% of 2005 levels by the end of the decade. They are pointing to continued progress in recent years propelled by corporations and state and local governments, even after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris accord. 

The White House also plans to release a national climate strategy on Monday that illustrates how the U.S. can meet its global climate commitments by rapidly electrifying transportation and buildings while decarbonizing the power sector that supplies them

“Most of our regulation of utilities, most of our transportation planning and building codes -- stuff that really affects emissions -- is not done in Washington, it’s done in the states and the regions and the cities,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate with research group E3G. 

And the U.S. plans to highlight a portfolio of regulations and executive actions that will demand greater reductions, regardless of what happens on Capitol Hill. That includes a U.S. mandate to curb the production of hydrofluorocarbons finalized last month, a pending rule to set the most stringent yet federal greenhouse gas emissions limits on passenger cars and light trucks and anticipated proposals to impose the strongest-ever federal mandates on methane leaks from oil and gas wells.

“In addition to the historic legislation moving forward, President Biden will be coming to Glasgow with a strong footing because of his unprecedented efforts to mobilize the entire federal government in tackling the climate crisis,” said White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy. 

Weaker Hand

Still, few dispute that Biden’s hand in Glasgow is weaker without the enacted legislation that he sought from Congress before his departure.

“The U.S. has much more leverage over international countries when we have our own domestic house in order,” said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

The failure thus far to get a plan through Congress is likely to particularly disappoint conference host and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who told Bloomberg News he wanted countries to make “hard pledges” before the meeting. 

The White House is hoping that what Biden can’t deliver in substance, he can deliver in style. 

He is planning what the White House has billed as a “major address” on climate at the summit, and is expected to attend and speak at a series of sessions addressing specific elements of the fight to reduce human effects on the climate. He’ll also be holding discussions on an effort to counter the China’s Belt and Road initiative with global infrastructure funding from the U.S. and allies expected to place a greater emphasis on environmental concerns.

And the U.S. is planning a show of force, with a dozen senior U.S. officials, more than 50 members of Congress and former President Barack Obama all expected to attend the summit and meet with foreign leaders.

It’s vital for the international community “to see that a president is throwing his weight behind doing it right,” said David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s International Climate Initiative. 

Activists say Biden must avoid the kind of disappointment that followed Obama after the 2009 Copenhagen summit ended in bickering and a timid commitment to keep temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). 

The breakdown in Copenhagen “was an early sign of the Obama administration’s failure on climate,” said Lukas Ross, a program manager at Friends of the Earth. “It would be a terrible shame if Glasgow was remembered as Biden’s Copenhagen.”

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