US president Joe Biden's administration plans to tout ambitious efforts to address climate change at the Cop 28 UN climate conference in Dubai, but Biden is sending vice president Kamala Harris to lead the large US delegation.
"The vice president's participation in Cop 28 will continue the Biden-Harris Administration's leadership on bold, global action to address the climate crisis, advance US climate goals and help ensure a strong outcome at Cop 28," the White House said today.
Biden separately informed UAE president Mohammad bin Zayed that Harris will represent the US at the climate summit, together with presidential climate envoy John Kerry and officials from more than 20 government agencies.
Biden attended the previous two UN climate summits in the UK and Egypt. The White House did not provide a reason for Biden's non-attendance at Cop 28.
Harris over the past year has increasingly stepped in to represent the US at major international conferences. In addition to addressing the summit on 2 December and having discussions with other leaders on climate, Harris also plans to address the conflict in Gaza with regional and global leaders during her visit to Dubai, a senior US official said.
The Biden administration's contribution to Cop 28 includes a roster of legislation and initiatives already enacted, rather than new proposals, although the White House is promising "to ratchet up climate ambition through the numerous efforts that we're taking on with our partners on the sidelines of the conference."
The US delegation will tick off investments under the Inflation Reduction Act climate legislation, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other measures that collectively will contribute to Biden's goal of "cutting our carbon pollution by 50-52pc below 2005 levels by 2030," presidential clean energy adviser John Podesta said.
Analysis by the administration and independent experts suggests that Biden's signature climate legislation and other current policies could reduce the US' greenhouse gas emissions by 40pc by 2030 — a significant achievement, but short of the US pledge of a 50-52pc reduction from 2005 levels.
On a key metric of climate finance, the US is citing OECD research that shows that the advanced economies last year for the first time may have met the goal of extending $100bn/yr to developing countries. "This is a significant milestone that the US and partners have been working tirelessly towards for over a decade when [former president] Barack Obama and other leaders made this pledge in 2008," White House senior climate adviser Sarah Ladislaw said.
The US will take an active part in discussions about contributing to a loss and damage fund, to address the irreversible and unavoidable effects of climate change, but will not make an immediate announcement on a possible contribution to such a fund, another senior US official said.
Biden has pledged over $11bn for international climate finance and another $3bn toward climate adaptation in his fiscal year 2024 budget proposal, which has run into opposition from the majority-Republican House of Representatives.
Despite that challenge, "we feel good about the direction and our ability to make good on and work towards those goals," the official said, including by leveraging the private and World Bank finance mechanisms.
Addressing climate change is featuring high on Biden's re-election platform — the president today visited Colorado to tout new clean energy manufacturing jobs in a district held by Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert.
"That district is represented by someone in Congress who not only didn't vote for [the Inflation Reduction Act] legislation, but is actively trying to repeal that legislation," a third senior US official said. "We still have folks in leadership positions in the House Republican Party that are not only trying to slow down the pace of climate action, but deny it and reverse course."
