28/03/2021

(AU) Biden Invites Morrison To Climate Summit, Urges Lift In Ambition

Sydney Morning Herald - Matthew Knott

Washington: Prime Minister Scott Morrison is among 40 leaders invited by the Biden administration to a high-powered climate change summit in April, a meeting designed to spur a raft of ambitious new carbon reduction pledges from global leaders.

The invite marks a welcome change for Morrison from the end of last year, when UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson pointedly declined to ask him to join a virtual “climate ambition summit”.

Johnson told Morrison in a letter that he had been snubbed because Australia had not announced ambitious enough goals to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

US President Joe Biden has invited 40 world leaders to a climate summit in April. Credit: Bloomberg

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, recently said the US and Australia were not “on the same page” when it came to tackling climate change.

The Biden administration has not made participation in its summit, to be held virtually on April 22 and 23, contingent on any specific new carbon reduction commitments.

But the Morrison government will still face pressure to announce new steps to tackle to climate change.

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In his invite to the summit, Biden urged leaders to use the event to outline how their countries will contribute to stronger climate ambition.

The Biden administration will announce an “ambitious” 2030 emissions target in the lead-up to the summit, the White House said.

Environmental group are urging Biden to pledge a 50 per cent in US emissions below 2005 levels by 2030.

Biden is also expected to make investment in clean energy technologies a major plank of a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan he will unveil next week.

The other leaders invited to the summit include Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pledged to work closely with the US President-Elect Joe Biden on key issues such as climate change.

 Collectively, the nations represented at the summit account for around 80 per cent of global emissions and global GDP.

The fact Biden has invited China and Russia to the summit - two nations his administration has named as major threats to global stability - shows his determination to separate action on climate change from disagreements on issues such as trade and human rights.

“The Leaders Summit on Climate will underscore the urgency – and the economic benefits – of stronger climate action,” the White House said in a statement on Saturday (AEDT).

“It will be a key milestone on the road to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) this November in Glasgow.”

The White House said one of the key aims for the summit was to galvanise efforts by the world’s major economies to keep a limit to global warming of 1.5 degree Celsius within reach.

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In a discussion with former vice president Al Gore last month, Kerry said: “Australia has had some differences with us, we’ve not been able to get on the same page completely.

“That was one of the problems in Madrid as you recall, together with Brazil.”

At the Madrid climate summit in 2019, some countries accused Australia and Brazil of thwarting progress on climate action by refusing to drop a plan to use carry-over carbon credits from the Kyoto Protocol to meet their 2030 Paris Agreement targets.

In a speech earlier this month to the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue, Kerry said the 2020s has to be the the “decade of ambition and the decade of decision and the decade of action” on climate change.

“So it’s a sprint,” he said. “And it’s a sprint towards substantial emission reductions by 2030.”

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