President Biden plans to make the case on Monday in an address to the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow that the United States has a strategy to reach its climate goals — even though he's had trouble getting his measures passed by his fellow Democrats in Congress.Biden's national climate adviser Gina McCarthy told reporters that the U.S. would release a detailed long-term plan to show how it can cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030 from 2005 levels and achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050."It illustrates how, within three decades, the U.S. can meet our global climate commitments by decarbonizing the power sector, electrifying transportation and buildings, transforming industry, reducing non-CO2 emissions, and reinvigorating our natural lands," she said.Biden also plans to launch a new program to help developing countries adapt to climate change that he hopes will provide $3 billion in financing per year by fiscal 2024, the White House said. The program, known by the acronym PREPARE for the President's Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience, will need the approval of Congress. There also will be new commitments from private sector companies to help with finance, said John Kerry, Biden's special envoy for climate.Biden told reporters on Sunday that the United States would be able to meet its climate goals even though a key measure was cut from his sweeping spending package of climate incentives and social safety net programs. That package, combined with an infrastructure bill that has been passed by the Senate, together contain $900 billion in climate and resilience measures, he said. Democrats, who hold a narrow majority in the U.S. Congress, have not yet agreed to the size and scope of the package, though Biden said he was confident they would vote on it in coming days.The summit, known as COP26, last for two weeks. Biden will be in Glasgow for two days, meeting with leaders to press them to take bigger steps to cut their emissions. Over the next two weeks, more than 10 of his cabinet secretaries and agency heads will be at the summit, as well as more than 50 members of Congress, Kerry said.Kerry said the United States plans to work with a number of countries to help reach targets, such as:
- A clean hydrogen initiative in Saudi Arabia, to boost the use of renewables for power
- An alliance with Indonesia to reduce the rate of deforestation
- A partnership with India to deploy more renewable power
Kerry said that countries representing 65% of global GDP have signed on to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit)"Obviously, if you have 65% in, you got 35% out, and that's the challenge coming out of Glasgow," he said. "Can those countries step up? How fast will they step up? What will they pledge to do over the course of the next years?" Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.