John Kerry was speaking on the sidelines of the UN’s COP27 climate summit in Egypt.
Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt:
The United States on Tuesday sought to assure a UN climate summit in Egypt that it would stick to its energy transition even if Republicans win the midterm elections.
The COP27 talks call on wealthier countries to meet their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions and help poorer countries financially help green their economies.
Developing countries ravaged by natural disasters have argued for unexpected taxes on oil companies’ profits and demanded that wealthy polluters compensate for the losses caused by their emissions.
But the US midterm elections are also looming large as President Joe Biden’s Democrats face an uphill battle to maintain their majority in Congress against Republicans who are less conducive to international climate action. Huh.
The Republican victory could be a boon to the ambitions of former President Donald Trump, who is expected to make another bid for the White House.
Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Biden returned the United States to the treaty on his first day in office in 2020.
“The climate crisis is not just a threat to our infrastructure, economy and security – it threatens every single aspect of our lives on a daily basis,” Kerry said on the sidelines of the summit at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. “
He added that even if Democrats lose the election, “President Biden is more determined than ever to continue what we are doing.”
“And no one else can change what we’re going through,” Carey said. “The market has decided to do what we need to do to respond to the climate crisis.”
Biden scored a major victory earlier this year when Congress passed the “Inflation Reduction Act” that would heavily spend on green energy initiatives.
About 100 world leaders were attending the summits on Monday and Tuesday, but Biden will arrive only on Friday after the midterms. He then travels to Cambodia for the annual US-ASEAN summit and then to Indonesia for the G20 summit.
oil profit tax
The first day of the summit was marked by a dire warning from UN chief Antonio Guterres, who told COP27 that humanity faces a stark choice: “cooperate or perish”.
Nations around the world are facing increasingly intense natural disasters that have killed thousands and cost billions of dollars this year.
They range from devastating floods in Nigeria and Pakistan to droughts in the United States and several African countries, as well as unprecedented heatwaves across three continents.
Countries are under pressure to step up efforts to reduce emissions to meet the ambitious goal of preventing temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era.
Developing countries and emerging economies, excluding China, need investments of more than $2 trillion per year by 2030 if the world is to stop global warming and cope with its effects, a UN-backed report said on Tuesday. To do.
One after another, the leaders of developing countries called for the establishment of a “loss and damage” fund that would compensate them for the destruction caused by natural disasters, arguing that the largest portion of emissions harming the planet Rich nations are responsible for this.
Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne – speaking on behalf of a group of small island nations at risk from rising sea levels and tropical storms – said it would pay for losses and damages caused by oil companies on windfall gains. It’s time to tax.
“While they’re making profits, the planet is burning,” Brown told fellow leaders.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley on Monday called for a 10 percent tax on oil companies to make up for losses and damages.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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