: Biden Administration Faces Critical Moment Ahead of Climate Talks #WorldNEWS Over the last month, as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rose and the U. S. made its rocky departure from Afghanistan,

Biden Administration Faces Critical Moment Ahead of Climate Talks #WorldNEWS
Over the last month, as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rose and the U. S. made its rocky departure from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has sought to turn the nations attention back to climate change, repeatedly warning America that the clock is ticking.
In the last two weeks alone, the Department of Energy announced that the country could be generating 40% of the nations electricity from solar in the next 15 years. On Sept. 17, the White House announced with the European Union a joint commitment to cut emissions from methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by nearly a third by 2030. Three days later, on Monday, the Administration announced new efforts to protect workers from extreme heat. And Biden himself hit the road to promote his ambitious infrastructure package as an opportunity to tackle climate change. “We don’t have time now,” Biden said during a visit to a renewable energy lab in Colorado on Sept. 14. “This is a decisive decade. ”
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The clock is also ticking for the Biden team. The Administration urgently needs to assure the world that the U. S. is committed to tackling climate change—and convince others to come along for the ride—ahead of critical United Nations climate talks set to take place in Glasgow, Scotland in November. “We will be measuring every way that we can reduce our emissions,” John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, told a gathering of U. S. mayors earlier this year. “We have to lay out a roadmap so that everybody can understand its not a phony, empty promise. ”
Bidens climate messaging blitz—part behind-the-scenes policymaking and part global public relations campaign—began in the early days of his presidency. Against a backdrop of surging COVID cases, Biden signed an executive order just one week into his tenure that declared climate change would be central to his Administration and directed federal officials to infuse climate considerations into economic and foreign policy. The Administration immediately began planning for an Earth Day climate summit to bring world leaders together and show that the U. S. was back in the climate conversation after years of the Trump Administration’s antagonism on the issue.
“This summit is our first step on the road we’ll travel together,” Biden said at the April summit, “to set our world on a path to a secure, prosperous, and sustainable future. ”
At that meeting, the Biden Administration set a target of cutting all U. S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030. Since then, even as other news stories have dominated headlines, the White House has sought to prove that the U.