April 23, 2021 Share
The White House is bringing out the billionaires, the CEOs and the union executives Friday to help sell President Joe Biden’s climate-friendly transformation of the U.S. economy at a virtual summit of world leaders.
The closing day of the two-day summit on climate change is to feature Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg, steelworker and electrical union leaders and executives for solar and other renewable energy.
It’s all in service of an argument U.S. officials say will make or break Biden’s climate agenda: Pouring trillions of dollars into clean-energy technology, research and infrastructure will jet-pack a competitive U.S. economy into the future and create jobs, while saving the planet.
Biden: US to Halve Emissions By 2030
Posted by Scott Lucas | Apr 23, 2021 |
An activist outside the White House, April 22, 2021 (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
Addressing 40 world leaders at the start of a two-day summit, President Joe Biden has committed to a halving of US global warming emissions by 2030.
In the meeting on Thursday, marking the American return to the Paris Agreement on climate change, Biden said, “This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative. A moment of peril, but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities.”
Biden also promised to double the US assistance to developing countries address climate change, with about $5.7 billion by 2024.
Rolling Stone Menu Is Biden’s Climate Summit Just Big Talk or a Prelude to Real Action?
The Earth Day summit may be pure theater, or it may prove pivotal. We’ll know in the coming months whether President Biden can transform words into action
By Brendan Smialowsi/AFP/Getty Images
After the first day of President Biden’s two-day climate summit this week, one could easily have the impression that global leaders are very, very good people who take the climate crisis very, very seriously. Biden had summoned together 40 heads of state from all the most powerful nations of the world for what amounted to a giant Zoom meeting to discuss how concerned they all are about the fate of human civilization on a superheated planet.
People stand in line to refill oxygen in cylinders in New Delhi, India, on Friday. (AP Photo)
(CN) The pandemic is entering a new deadly phase as India, the world’s second most populous nation with nearly 1.3 billion people, suffers a catastrophic rise in novel coronavirus infections and deaths.
On Thursday and Friday, India recorded the two highest daily tallies of coronavirus cases yet for any nation since the pandemic started, raising the specter that a catastrophic wave of death will follow as the virus spreads through India’s densely populated cities, towns and countryside.
A new record was set on Friday with 332,730 new cases. Deaths too are spiking with 2,102 new fatalities reported on Thursday and 2,256 on Friday. No other country has reported such a dramatic explosion of infections in such a short amount of time. A month ago, when the surge started, India was reporting on average about 42,000 new daily infections and about 200 daily deaths.