Earth Day summit
FROM PAGE 1
Suga, who discussed climate last week when he was Biden’s first foreign guest, significantly raised the goals of the world’s second largest developed economy to cutting emissions by 46 percent in 2030 compared with 2013.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, another early ally of Biden, boosted ambitions of his energy-exporting country to reductions of 40-45 percent below 2005 levels, compared with an earlier target of 30 percent.
“We must take action now. Because there’s no vaccine against a polluted planet,” Trudeau said.
The European Union this week confirmed its own ambitious goals and former bloc member Britain on the eve of Biden’s summit released the most far-reaching targets of any major economy with 78 percent cuts from 1990 levels by 2035.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Biden’s pledge “a game-changer” that will “have a transformative impact in the global fight against climate change.”
Britain in November will host a UN conference in Glasgow that aims to upgrade the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
A Biden administration official said with the new US target, enhanced commitments from Japan and Canada, and prior targets from the European Union and Britain, countries accounting for more than half the world’s economy were now committed to reductions to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres hailed the pledges made at the summit as a turning point but urged immediate action.
“Today’s summit shows the tide is turning for climate action, but there is still a long way to go,” Guterres said in a statement.
Under the 2015 Paris accord, former president Barack Obama said the United States would cut emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025 -- a goal that Biden, his vice president, has now dramatically scaled up.
In a brief glitch, Secretary of State Antony Blinken cut off a pre-recorded video from French President Emmanuel Macron to hear from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who appeared to be impatient to make his live remarks.
Both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke of commitments to climate change, agreeing to participate despite high tensions with Biden’s three-month-old administration.
Xi reiterated his pledge that China -- by far the world’s largest emitter -- would reach carbon neutral by 2060.
“China has committed to move from carbon peak to carbon neutrality in a much shorter time span than what might take many developed countries, and that requires extraordinarily hard efforts from China,” Xi said.
He said China would “strictly control” coal-powered plants.
But environmentalists have voiced alarm at the lack of immediate action to curb coal, which is the dirtiest form of energy but politically sensitive due to mining jobs.
Faced with opposition from Trump’s Republican Party, Biden has sought to move quickly on climate and has cast his efforts as a way to create well-paying jobs.
Biden has proposed a $2 trillion infrastructure package that includes a major focus on greening the economy, including investment in renewable energy, electric cars and public transportation.
Biden also announced that the United States would double its climate aid to poor nations compared with Obama’s time -- another reversal from Trump, who cut off all such funding.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced that his nation would no longer fund coal-powered plants overseas after backing, along with Japan and China, billions of dollars in such dirty projects in Asia.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, one of Trump’s few international allies on climate, sounded a conciliatory note as he promised his nation would reach carbon neutrality by 2050 -- 10 years earlier than previously announced. He also promised to stop illegal deforestation by 2030.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India -- which is the third largest emitter, but far lower than the West on a per capita basis -- made no new pledges but promised a new “partnership” with Biden to mobilize green investment and urged a greater “lifestyle change” to fight climate change.
A UN report late last year said that the world was on course for warming of three degrees Celsius -- a level at which the planet is forecast to see many glaciers and ice caps melt, low-lying areas submerged and increasingly severe droughts, floods and disasters that could trigger famine and mass migration.