climate change
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Activists dump cow poop in DC street to protest Biden climate plan
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There’s a better way than Biden’s unrealistic, expensive climate pledge
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China underreporting severity of air pollution levels, new study suggests
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Greta Thunberg to Congress: US must cut fossil fuels before poorer countries
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President Joe Biden calls Russian President Vladimir Putin a \u201ckiller,\u201d while Chinese President Xi Jinping and his regime \u201cblatantly violate human rights\u201d and both think \u201cautocracy is the wave of the future.\u201d Yet he invited both to his trumpeted two-day virtual Earth Day summit and acted as if their promises and pledges have any real meaning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an encouraging start,\u201d Biden told the 40 world leaders attending his dog and pony show Thursday. \u201cWe\u2019re really beginning to make some real progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
What a joke.<\/p>\n
Biden announced before the summit started that he was doubling his old boss President Barack Obama\u2019s greenhouse-gas-emission reduction goals under the Paris climate agreement, vowing to cut them by 52 percent by 2035 and putting the country on track to release net-zero emissions by 2050. It\u2019s a \u201cmoral imperative,\u201d he intoned.<\/p>\n
His climate czar, John Kerry, was a lot more frank in January, when Biden said he\u2019d rejoin the 2015 Paris agreement. “Almost 90 percent of all of the planet\u2019s global emissions come from outside of US borders,” he noted. “We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn\u2019t solved.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the (non-binding) Paris accord, Xi vowed only that China, the world\u2019s worst emitter of carbon dioxide, would reach its greenhouse-gas-emissions peak<\/em> by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by safely-far-off 2060. Last year, China not only generated more than half the world\u2019s coal-fired power (the dirtiest fossil fuel), it also opened three times more coal plants in 2020 than the rest of the world combined. It\u2019s the only G20 country whose emissions rose last year.<\/p>\n Yet Xi told Biden’s summit, with a straight face and without challenge, \u201cTo protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to boost the environment is to boost productivity. It\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d Except, again, he’s not even trying<\/em> “to boost the environment” for another decade.<\/p>\n His vice foreign minister, Le Yucheng, was more honest after the recent meeting with Kerry. \u201cFor a big country with 1.4 billion people, these goals are not easily delivered,\u201d he told the Associated Press.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s pointless summit gave another autocrat a chance to feign virtue. \u201cThe fate of our entire planet, the development prospects of each country, the well-being and quality of life of people largely depend on the success of these efforts,\u201d solemnly declared Putin, whose sharpest domestic critic, Alexei Navalny, lies near death in prison.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline his first day in office proved he\u2019s more interested in posturing on about \u201cenvironmental justice\u201d than in letting the American economy flourish. He\u2019d see even more Americans jobs disappear to make not a dent in climate change while the world\u2019s worst autocrats continue to pollute \u2014 and get away with murder.<\/p>\nShare this article:<\/h3>\n