United States President Joe Biden says that he and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have agreed to work in the direction of attaining net-zero emissions by 2050.
“We’re launching a high-level, climate-ambition ministerial and to align our policies and our goals to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050,” Biden mentioned in a speech on Tuesday following a bilateral assembly with the Canadian chief.
US Special Climate Change Envoy John Kerry and his Canadian counterpart, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, will host the ministerial effort.
The partnership comes after Biden revoked a key allow for the Keystone XL pipeline, which might have transported 830,000 barrels a day of carbon-intensive heavy crude from Canada’s Alberta to Nebraska within the US, on his first day in workplace final month – one amid a flurry of government orders geared toward curbing local weather change.
A US official mentioned the North American neighbours will “cooperate on policy alignment” and purpose to announce new emission discount targets below the Paris local weather settlement for the 12 months 2030 by April 22 – the day that the US will host a local weather leaders summit.
The official informed reporters that areas of coverage alignment “of mutual interest” would come with decreasing methane in oil and fuel operations, transport and automobiles and local weather change resilience.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau informed the Reuters information company earlier this month that the US is concerned with boosting imports of hydroelectric energy. In a separate interview, Environment Minister Wilkinson mentioned combining Canada’s clear power with US wind, photo voltaic and geothermal energy was a precedence for early talks between the 2 nations.
‘A current reality’
Meanwhile, in a speech to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, representatives of among the world’s small-island nations – among the many most weak to rising seas brought on by warming temperatures – highlighted the pressing want for brand new instruments to foretell and put together for climate-linked safety threats. They additionally referred to as for modifications in worldwide regulation to accommodate individuals displaced by local weather change.
“Make no mistake, climate change’s existential threat to our own survival is not a future consideration, but a current reality,” mentioned Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne in a speech on the digital occasion.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who hosted the session forward of the COP26 United Nations local weather negotiations deliberate for November in Glasgow, mentioned local weather change had change into “a geopolitical issue every bit as much as an environmental one”.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson watches a video deal with by conservationist David Attenborough at a session of the UN Security Council on local weather and safety [Stefan Rousseau/Pool via Reuters]Around the world, weather-related disasters are actually displacing 16 million individuals a 12 months and growing migration, with water shortages and crop failures additionally making weak individuals prey to violent “extremists” and human traffickers, he mentioned.
Climate change results – from sea-level rise to worsening wildfires, droughts, floods and storms – are undermining growth in poor nations and can worsen with out swift motion to slash planet-heating emissions, he and others mentioned.
Security risk
The risks are more and more apparent for wealthy nations in addition to poor, they added, whether or not within the type of wilder climate, hovering insurance coverage prices or extra migrants crossing borders.
“It is absolutely clear that climate change is a threat to our collective security and the security of our nations,” Johnson mentioned.
“Whether you like it or not, it is a matter of when, not if, your country and your people will have to deal with the security impacts of climate change.”
Around the world, weather-related disasters are actually displacing 16 million individuals a 12 months and fuelling migration, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson mentioned on Tuesday [File: Willy Kurniawan/Reuters]Through the UN local weather negotiations and different groupings, nations have taken some steps to handle the rising dangers, together with creating new insurance coverage swimming pools for poor nations threatened by excessive climate.
Under the Paris Agreement on local weather change, wealthier nations additionally dedicated to boost $100bn a 12 months beginning in 2020 to assist poorer nations develop cleanly and adapt to extra excessive climate and rising seas – a purpose but to be met.
The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has pushed exhausting for 30 years for a proper means to handle unavoidable “loss and damage” from local weather change, together with the potential lack of whole islands to increased seas.
A “Warsaw Mechanism” to cope with local weather loss and injury was created below UN talks – however little assistance is on provide moreover help for insurance coverage insurance policies.
So far, representatives of small island states mentioned, worldwide motion was lagging, with Browne calling efforts “fragmented and quite frankly inadequate”.
Aubrey Webson, the AOSIS chairman and Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United Nations, mentioned getting the UN Security Council to again swifter motion on local weather dangers might pave the best way for breakthroughs at COP26.
“What we might need to see is the Security Council using its muscle to push the COP forward,” he informed the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.
