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Great climate reset of USA
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- A new era begins: The new Biden administration in USA is trying to undo the work of Trump in many ways. A striking reversal is on the climate front For four years under former president Donald Trump, the United States govt. cut itself adrift from the broad international consensus. It turned its back on the Paris climate accords, undermined coordination on climate efforts at major summits, boosted the fossil fuel industry and championed narrow national interests in the face of what the U.S.’s own intelligence community sees as a looming global catastrophe.
- Change of direction: But President Biden immediately shifted course. He restored American participation in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, while recognizing that the world’s biggest economies are already lagging behind in the face of an escalating climate emergency. He has proposed a multitrillion dollar infrastructure and jobs plan that would accelerate the country’s transition to a greener economy.
- Biden appointed former secretary of state John F. Kerry to be the White House climate czar, who jetted off on a globe-spanning tour, heralding the United States’ revived commitment to what he has described as “the decisive decade” of the climate fight.
- Kerry held two days of closed-door talks in Shanghai with Chinese counterparts and emerged with a joint statement of intent to combat climate change “with the seriousness and urgency that it demands.”
- Global summit on climate change: The Biden administration is set for a major leaders summit on climate. It hopes to catalyze new international action. Ahead of that gathering, the Biden administration will unveil a more aggressive plan to cut U.S. emissions — probably around 50 percent by the end of the decade, compared with 2005 levels.
- Leaders have welcomed the Biden administration’s initiative. French President Macron said President Biden is 100 percent right to do so, and the urgency was justified by the pattern of extreme weather-related events of recent years.
- Macron gestured to the need for major emitters in the developing world to drastically curb their emissions, too. “We need to accelerate innovation and ability to deliver. We need India and China to be with us.”
- Some 40 world leaders were to participate in Biden’s virtual climate summit. Delegations were to discuss a host of thorny issues, from methods to curbing emissions to the burgeoning realm of climate finance, as governments and international donors reckon with the toll climate change is already exacting on poorer and more vulnerable countries.
- What exactly is it: It’s a gathering of the world’s major economies, who also happen to be the major emitters. It’s an opportunity for level-setting and to start a conversation with the most important players at the outset of a critical decade. The main target many are focusing on is the need “to limit the Earth’s warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels — a threshold beyond which scientists predict irreversible environmental damage. It was good that John Kerry and veteran Chinese climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua affirmed their two countries’ ambition of keeping that temperate limit "within reach."
- Only area of cooperation: Climate is seen as perhaps the sole arena for substantive U.S.-Chinese cooperation, given the wider animosities that now define the relationship between the two powers. But even there, numerous challenges abound. The intensifying rivalry over technology could spill into climate policy, where innovations in energy, batteries, vehicles and carbon storage offer solutions for reducing emissions. American lawmakers are demanding that the United States block Chinese products from being used in the infrastructure projects that Biden has proposed.
- Pushing China harder: Some argue that the Biden administration should leverage the support of Western allies to pressure China into reforming its energy supply through a series of carbon taxes on Chinese imports. Only a united climate coalition has the potential to bring China to the table for productive negotiations, rather than the extractive ones it currently pursues.
- Bilateral relations: The expectations that climate cooperation could help reverse the downward spiral in bilateral ties are largely misplaced. With both China and the U.S. hardening their stance towards each other, it’s getting harder by the day for them to still cooperate on climate in the middle of deepening, across-the-board competition. On his missions abroad, Kerry said the Biden administration was acting from a position of “humility,” aware of both the enormous role the United States has played for decades in emitting greenhouse gases and, more recently, in stalling more aggressive climate action under the Trump administration. On the American left, activists and some Democratic lawmakers see climate action as Washington’s moral responsibility.
- Summary: Much of the CO2 in the atmosphere is red, white and blue, which is the historic legacy of American and British industrialization. It is time they stood up to the challenge, and gave a working solution. As for India, the delicate work in balancing its growth imperative (and use of coal) versus pursuing the climate goals is a work in progress.
- Knowledge centre:
- NDCs - 2015 was a historic year in which 196 Parties came together under the Paris Agreement to transform their development trajectories so that they set the world on a course towards sustainable development, aiming at limiting warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. The Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are at the heart of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of these long-term goals. NDCs embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The Paris Agreement (Article 4, paragraph 2) requires each Party to prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that it intends to achieve. Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions. In order to enhance the ambition over time the Paris Agreement provide that successive NDCs will represent a progression compared to the previous NDC and reflect its highest possible ambition. All Parties are requested to submit the next round of NDCs (new NDCs or updated NDCs) by 2020 and every five years thereafter (e.g. by 2020, 2025, 2030), regardless of their respective implementation time frames.
- Industrial Revolution - The Industrial Revolution transformed economies that had been based on agriculture and handicrafts into economies based on large-scale industry, mechanized manufacturing, and the factory system. New machines, new power sources, and new ways of organizing work made existing industries more productive and efficient. Causes were the emergence of capitalism, European imperialism, efforts to mine coal, and the effects of the Agricultural Revolution. Capitalism was a central component necessary for the rise of industrialization.
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