US President Joe Biden on Friday announced a bid with the European Union to lead slashing of methane gas emissions ahead of a UN climate change summit where he urged the world to show “highest” ambition.
“We’re working with the European Union and other partners… (on) a global methane pledge to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030,” Biden said from the White House at a virtual forum with nine foreign leaders.
This will “not only rapidly reduce the rate of global warming but it will also produce very valuable side benefits, like improving public health,” he said.
Biden called the goal “ambitious but realistic,” urging countries to commit at the COP26 summit organized by the United Nations in Glasgow, Scotland in November.
There was no immediate comment from the European Union.
Biden said the United States was taking concrete steps toward UN climate goals but noted that recent devastating flooding in the US northeast and wildfires in western states echoed extreme weather events from China to the Amazon.
Last month, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the Earth’s average global temperature will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels around 2030, a decade earlier than projected three years ago.
Biden said this represents “a code red for humanity” and that “we have to act, all of us, we have to act now.”
“We have to bring to Glasgow our highest ambitions. Those who have not yet done so, time is running out,” he warned.
Biden called the virtual White House forum — where there were notable absences of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the leaders of Brazil and India — in preparation for the Glasgow summit.
World leaders will also be attending a separate closed-doors climate conference on Monday on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly in New York.
The Glasgow summit is focused on ensuring the world sticks to an agreed goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But “without adequate commitments from every nation in this room, the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 slips through our hands and that is a disaster,” Biden said.
He noted the US commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 50 and 52 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, along with several other hefty targets.
Attending the White House meeting by video link were the presidents of Argentina, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, European Council President Charles Michel, and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
