The press is widely reporting this week that the Biden administration is working to make a splash about climate change in the coming days. For example, Bloomberg says John Kerry "has been flying around the world trying to get some of the biggest polluters to step up their fight against climate change in time for a White House Earth Day summit on April 22."
The report indicates that the April goal could turn out to be a disappointment.
Kerry, the president's climate envoy, has been meeting with diplomats to reestablish America as a leader on global climate action after four years of backtracking under former President Donald Trump, Bloomberg says. "That means setting an ambitious 2030 emissions-reduction target and then cajoling others to strengthen their goals."
There may be a problem overcoming the world's mistrust, Bloomberg thinks, "since the U.S. reneged on its climate promises before."
"They've clearly been looking to try to encourage other countries to increase their ambition, but I don't think this is the date," said Pete Ogden, who served in the Obama administration and is now vice president for energy, climate and the environment at the United Nations Foundation. "I do not expect that everything will be on a glide path to 1.5 (Celsius) degrees," he said.
The Paris Agreement strives to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, the limit scientists say is needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming. To get there the world will have to zero out greenhouse gases emissions by 2050, a timeline that will only be achieved if countries step up their climate action significantly.
In its efforts to build deals by Earth Day, the administration is reporting favorable results for some close allies, but building agreements with powers like China, Brazil and India is proving difficult.
The New York Times says the administration is nearing agreements with Japan and Canada to bolster carbon emission reduction targets ahead of a closely watched summit of global leaders on Earth Day, April 22.
It says that "in the latest sign of how difficult it will be for President Biden to make climate change a core part of his foreign policy, similar agreements are also needed with China, India and Brazil, economic powerhouses that together produce more than a third of global emissions, and which remain elusive."
The cooperation of China, the world's largest emitter of climate-changing pollution, is vital to slowing global warming--but Beijing is also Washington's biggest rival on the world stage, the Times notes.
With Brazil, the Biden administration's efforts to negotiate an Amazon rainforest protection plan with conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro, have bitterly divided environmental advocates, given the Bolsonaro administration's dismal environmental record.
And in India, where Kerry recently wrapped up three days of negotiations that did not yield any specific promise to strengthen New Delhi's climate ambition, the administration must weigh its need for cooperation with its concerns over human rights, the Times says. Indian leaders, meantime, have been unsettled by pressure to deliver an announcement in time for the administration's summit after spending the past four years working with a U.S. administration that abandoned the rest of the world's efforts to tackle global warming.
"Maybe there's a little bit of time lag that will go into building that trust and relationship back," said Aarti Khosla, director of Climate Trends, a climate change nonprofit based in New Delhi.
The focal point of the Leaders' Summit on Climate will be the Biden administration's plan to cut American emissions by 2030, and how it can overcome fierce Republican opposition. The ambitions and practicality of that target could determine the Biden administration's success in convincing other nations to do more than they have already pledged.
"Summitry is theater, and it can be extremely impactful if there is a big centerpiece," said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a climate adviser for the United Nations Secretary General. "That centerpiece is the U.S. plan."
Publicly, the Biden administration has tried to dampen expectations that other countries will make major announcements at the U.S. event. Behind the scenes, though, State Department diplomats have been hustling to prod allies into doing just that.
Kerry, in a statement, declined to specifically address the likelihood of other countries joining the United States in big announcements, saying the summit "will be a chance for major economies and other countries to work together at the highest possible levels to address the climate crisis."
U.S. progress toward new agreements with some industrialized countries in less than three months is a testament to the climate diplomacy that Kerry has conducted, the Times says. He has traveled to six countries and held what aides described as dozens of video conferences and calls each week since January.
Yoshihide Suga, the prime minister of Japan, is expected to announce a new emissions target in the range of 50 percent below 2013 levels by 2030 in the near future. The United States and Japan also have been discussing new restrictions on coal financing, though an announcement on that remains unclear.
A major South Korean news outlet, the Maeil Business Newspaper, reported this week that South Korean leaders were poised to announce an overseas coal financing moratorium. And Canada, which already has signed a strong bilateral agreement with the United States on climate change, has said it will announce stronger targets at the summit.
So, we will see. Certainly, climate change agreements are a central part if the administration's goals and producers should watch the details of these efforts very closely as they emerge, Washington Insider believes.