Much of the drastic steps that Biden has announced, which trump the commitments made even by President Barack Obama, are perhaps meant to bridge the credibility gap perceived around the world when it came to Trump’s almost utter disdain for global climate change efforts.
The United States under President Joe Biden wants once again to capture the leadership in addressing the challenges emanating from climate change. President Donald Trump brought the US to nadir when it withdrew from the Paris Agreement. The US produced 6.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2019 and occupies the second position in the world after China in the emission of GHG. Though the US remains the highest GHG emissions per person. Hence, the onus certainly lies on the US to take the climate change issues with a greater priority.
Amidst the raging battle against the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the President of the United States, Joe Biden convened a virtual gathering of 40 leaders from across the world to discuss the ways and means to fight the clear and present danger of climate change. More than anything else, such a move from President Biden is being seen as a game changer coming after four years of President Trump, who chose to take the US out of the Paris Climate pact. Taking forward his clarion call for “restoring America”, his pledge to do more than any other US President in recent times, to tackle climate change, is being seen as a crucial step in restoring American leadership in times of global crisis. Among other things, the highlight of the summit was President Biden’s pledge to achieve a 50% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. This will mean sweeping changes across the spectrum, in terms of boosting the economy and creating jobs, while shifting to alternative sources of energy.
Much of the drastic steps that Biden has announced, which trump the commitments made even by President Barack Obama, are perhaps meant to bridge the credibility gap perceived around the world when it came to Trump’s almost utter disdain for global climate change efforts. The steps announced by President Biden are envisioned to “set America on a path of a net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050”. The gathering of world leaders for the virtual summit on climate change comes after the spadework done by his Chief Climate Envoy John Kerry in countries, including India, whose actions will be highly consequential in dealing with the challenges imminent because of climate change. Even during his presidential campaign, Joe Biden made it very clear that climate change remained on top of his priority list and his actions post-election.
President Biden calls the current decade as the most decisive one in terms of avoiding “the worst consequences of a climate crisis”. Dealing with the climate crisis, according to President Biden, is “a moral imperative, an economic imperative”. One important takeaway is the Biden administration’s approach to distinctly link combating climate change to boosting economic growth and creating jobs in America. Essentially, failure to deal with the climate change crisis is being seen as an economic crisis in the making as well. Adapting to the fundamental changes that will be required across varied sectors, and in America’s energy mix, is a task cut out for the Biden administration in the days to come. For instance, what steps are necessary to achieve the goal of making the US power sector 100% carbon pollution free by 2035? The corresponding question is, whether such steps will be popular among US policymakers and the public.
Apart from the international cooperation that the Biden administration is seeking towards fighting climate change, the challenge ahead will also be seen in the polarized domestic political milieu in the United States. How much support the Biden administration is able to garner among the Republicans remains to be seen. The constituencies in the United States that are dependent on the fossil fuel industry are not likely to go along easily with the ambitious commitments made by President Biden, which include pausing oil drilling on public land, and dissensions will most probably be witnessed in the US Congress. While debates abound on the need to cut down carbon emissions drastically to arrest any catastrophic rise in global temperature, and the detrimental impact that climate change would have specifically on global economic growth, the virtual leaders’ summit assumes extra significance.
It is apparent that tackling the climate crisis, will require working together with a number of countries, even those with which the United States has serious differences over other issues. The uphill task for the Biden’s climate diplomacy will be to deal with China, because the convergences and divergences between these two countries, which are locked in a great power competition, will be consequential. Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who has been at the forefront of putting diplomacy first, called climate change as both an opportunity and a challenge. “If we succeed, we will capitalize on the greatest opportunity to create quality jobs in generations,” Blinked said, while commenting that “if America fails to lead the world on addressing the climate crisis, we won’t have much of a world left.” US engagement with India has been seeing a positive trend in terms of creating common grounds on tackling the climate crisis, and one of climate envoy John Kerry’s primary visits was to India. Although Prime Minister Narendra Modi made no new commitments at the virtual summit, and the emphasis was on India’s comparative low per capita emissions, the new “India-US Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 partnership” was launched “to help mobilise investments, demonstrate clean technologies, and enable green collaborations.”
There is certainly now a universal understanding that more and more concentration of GHG in the atmosphere, more and more challenges for climate change. The developed countries would require to accept the responsibilities and change their consumption patterns. The developing countries or the so called emerging economies like India and China would also become more responsible and change the constituents of their energy security, which has been largely fossil fuel dependent energy security. The global menace of climate change will have to be addressed jointly by both developed and developing nations.
Dr Arvind Kumar is Professor of the United States’ Studies and Chairperson of the Centre for Canadian, US and Latin American Studies at School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi. Dr Monish Tourangbam specialises in American affairs and teaches Geopolitics and International Relations at Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal.