A two-day virtual summit on climate change started today. Leaders of countries around the world have put aside their disputes and formed a coalition aimed at tackling climate change.
U.S. President Joe Biden today presided over the virtual summit aimed at dealing with climate change. Both President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin partook in the two-day virtual meeting, during which issues related to carbon emissions, the use of fossil fuels and carbon neutrality were discussed.
This is Biden’s first time holding a virtual summit aimed at tackling climate change after former president Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris accord, as Biden signed an executive order just hours after he had been inaugurated on January 21 earlier this year.
In his opening speech, President Joe Biden mentioned, “Climate change is more than threat. It also presents one of the largest job creation opportunities in history.”
Biden’s administration has been dedicated to dealing with climate change, and sees this as one of the most urgent things on Biden’s to-do list. Taking into account the fact that problems brought by the COVID-19 pandemic have to be dealt with immediately, Biden decided to launch the nationwide vaccination programme first before dealing with climate change. Now, his multi-pronged strategy of tackling with both the pandemic and climate change at the same time has proven effective.
Last year, a gargantuan rescue effort was underway after massive wildfires plagued the U.S. state of California. This, coupled with other problems brought by climate change, has prompted Democrats to pledge to steer the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels. And even with Democrats doing their part, the U.S. is still not out of the woods yet, as problems related to climate change are not pinpricks, and that Americans are running out of time to stave off catastrophic extremes of global warming. Equally telling are humans in other parts of the world, as they will also be facing this problem, should climate change becomes a more serious problem.
This virtual summit has featured the world’s major polluters, and they have pledged to co-operate in fighting against climate change. Despite having put aside other rifts between the U.S., China and Russia, neither Putin nor Xi immediately followed the United States and some of its developed allies in making joint pledges to reduce fossil fuel pollution and carbon emissions during today’s summit.
Speaking first among the other global figures, President Xi Jinping promised that China will achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, while Biden pledged the U.S. will cut fossil fuel emissions as much as 52 percent by 2030.
Meantime, Japan announced its new 46 percent emissions reduction target.
And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his nation would boost its fossil fuel pollution cuts from 30 percent to at least 40 percent.
President Joe Biden presided over today’s summit, in an attempt to stave off the catastrophic effects of climate change. Unlike former U.S. President Donald Trump, Biden wishes to take the problem of climate change seriously.
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