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      Barack Obama has a nerve preaching about the climate crisis | Kate Aronoff

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      OpinionCop26Barack Obama has a nerve preaching about the climate crisisKate AronoffThe former US president directed his Cop26 speech at young people, but he made the task of keeping warming to 1.5C far harder Wed 10 Nov 2021 05.00 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 12.06 ESTHundreds of people thronged the corridors at Cop26 on Monday, trying to make it into an event in one of the Scottish Event Campus’s drab plenary rooms. Passing by, I asked a man in the crowd what all the commotion was for. He responded with one word: “Obama.” The former president still maintains his rock star-ish appeal. His speech proved the biggest draw of the conference so far. But what should we make of it in the cold light of day?Much of his message was directed at young people, whom he praised as both “sophisticated consumers” and the source of the “most important energy in this movement”. He was clear: it’s up to all of us – but especially young people – to come together and keep the planet from warming beyond 1.5C. “Collectively and individually we are still falling short” he said, in the kind of grand, sweeping tones that built his career. “We have not done nearly enough to address this crisis. We are going to have to do more. Whether that happens or not to a large degree is going to depend on you.”Obama implores world leaders to ‘step up now’ to avert climate disasterRead moreWho precisely is “we” in this scenario? The young people who were children when Obama took office did not clear the way for a 750% explosion in crude oil exports, as he did just a few days after the Paris agreement was brokered in 2015. Nor did they boast proudly about it years later, as ever-more research mounted about the dangers of continuing to invest in fossil fuels. Speaking at a Houston, Texas gala in 2018, the former president proudly took credit for booming US fossil fuel production. “Suddenly America is the largest oil producer. That was me people,” he boasted jokingly to an industry-friendly crowd. “Say thank you.”The UN-backed 2021 Production Gap Report found that world governments are now on track to produce double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than is compatible with keeping warming below 1.5C. Obama’s approach to boosting gas and renewables simultaneously, which he dubbed the “All of the above” doctrine, still appears to be a guiding principle of the Biden administration.Young people also didn’t use the US Export-Import Bank to direct $34bn to 70 fossil fuel projects around the world. Neither did they deploy the National Security Administration to surveil other countries’ delegations at the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. And they have not joined other wealthy nations at the UN Framework Conventions on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks to keep conversations about the enormous climate debt they owe the rest of the world off the table.Obama’s rhetoric mirrored the approach of the United States at countless climate talks. Where it tends to collapse the vast differences between and within countries, to avoid all but the most symbolic discussions of “common but differentiated responsibility”, as it says in the UNFCCC.The global north is responsible for 92% of excess carbon dioxide emissions since the dawn of the industrial age. The United States alone is responsible for 40% of those – a fact its negotiators in Republican and Democratic administrations alike have long sought to obscure. “If equity’s in,” said top Obama-era climate negotiator Todd Stern at climate talks in Durban, South Africa in 2011, “we’re out.Cop26 leaders blame individuals, while supporting a far more destructive system | Stephen ReicherRead moreObama speech day was also, less glamorously, loss and damage day. Climate-vulnerable countries continue to demand real financial commitments to support them rebuilding from the damages that rising temperatures are already causing. His administration is one major reason why that’s been so difficult. “There’s one thing that we don’t accept and won’t accept in this agreement,” Stern said while negotiating the Paris agreement in 2015, “and that is the notion that there should be liability and compensation for loss and damage. That’s a line that we can’t cross.”Obama wants to continue to make lofty speeches, which are ultimately campaigning for a return to his version of business as usual – better than Trump but utterly ill-equipped to take on the climate crisis. And he can’t help but take a swings at the left. “Don’t think you can ignore politics … You can’t be too pure for it,” he scolded. “It’s part of the process that is going to deliver all of us.”Plenty of young people did get involved in electoral politics, of course. They knocked on doors and made phone calls for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. He enjoyed the support of 60% of voters under 30, partly for his commitment to a $16.3tn green new deal climate programme.To hear Obama tell it, if enough people come together to raise awareness about the climate crisis and consume smartly, they will change enough hearts and minds to keep warming below 1.5C. That would be a lot easier if Obama, in his time as leader of the free world, hadn’t made the task so much harder for all those inspiring, passionate young people. TopicsCop26OpinionBarack ObamaGreenhouse gas emissionsUS politicsClimate crisiscommentReuse this content More

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      If Biden doesn’t pass the climate bill, it will be the betrayal of a generation | Daniel Sherrell

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      OpinionClimate crisisIf Biden doesn’t pass the climate bill, it will be the betrayal of a generationDaniel SherrellFailure to pass Build Back Better would disillusion a generation of voters, and potentially fracture the Democratic party Tue 9 Nov 2021 06.16 ESTLast modified on Tue 9 Nov 2021 13.10 ESTDeep into the night last Friday, long past the hour when most Americans had ceased paying attention, Congress passed the $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill otherwise known as the BIF. Its passage was heralded as a victory for President Biden, and the daily news chyrons dutifully marked a point in his column. But beyond the horserace myopia of the Beltway – and especially among young people – the news came tinged with the threat of disaster. Because for those of us interested in sustained human civilization on a habitable planet, the most relevant fact about the BIF is this: without consequent passage of the clean energy and social welfare bill known as Build Back Better, the BIF alone will exacerbate the climate crisis.AOC says Republican who posted sword attack video ‘cheered on’ by partyRead moreThe reasons are manifold. The bill is riddled with exemptions and subsidies for corporations like ExxonMobil, whose lobbyists were caught bragging about their role in shaping the text. It invests in highways, bridges and airports that – in the absence of an aggressive drive to electrify cars and planes – will only add to emissions from the transportation sector. And the climate funding it does contain is focused not on drawing down emissions but on preparing Americans for worsening floods, fires and superstorms. If this is all we get, the message to young people is clear: Exxon will continue to be allowed to drown your homes, but not to worry, the government is investing in some life vests. Good luck!When it comes to passing the Build Back Better bill, the handful of extremist, Wall Street-backed Democrats who have obstructed it for months are now asking for something they have done very little to earn: trust. It would be one thing if congresspeople like Josh Gottheimer and Abigail Spanberger gave the impression of fully understanding the gravity of the climate crisis and pulling out all the stops to make a commensurate response politically possible. Instead, they come off as narrow-minded political animals, too blinkered by the game to see the world around them burning.It seems doubtful that any of them have read – much less internalized – the findings of the latest IPCC report. If she had, Representative Spanberger might have registered the irony in her insisting that Biden “be normal and stop the chaos”. As if it weren’t precisely those ideas long considered “normal” – massive fossil fuel subsidies, economic austerity, energy market deregulation – that are leading us straight into planetary chaos.Even more worrisome, their excuse for obstructing Build Back Better seems less than fully genuine. They insist they need to see an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office on how the bill would affect the national deficit. But they seemed little bothered when the CBO made it known that their BIF would expand it by $256bn. They also seem intent on ignoring the many analyses – including several from the treasury department itself – showing that Build Back Better would actually reduce the deficit. And that’s not to even mention the fact – still rarely mentioned, somehow! – that climate disasters cost Americans $1.9tn in 2020 alone.Even if their concern about the deficit is genuine, it’s grounded in a fundamental misapprehension of contemporary macroeconomics, which is undergoing a revolution in how it understands national debt and deficit spending. It’s as if they made some sort of superstitious pact, circa 1980, to admit no additional research from either economists or climate scientists. Even the former chief economist of the CBO made it clear that their insistence on a CBO score is ludicrous. “This is a really important package that will change people’s lives, and that should be the guiding principle,” she said in reference to Build Back Better. “The 10-year window [for CBO scoring] is arbitrary. Aiming for deficit neutrality is arbitrary – it’s arbitrariness on top of arbitrariness.”But despite all of these red flags, most of the self-styled House “moderates” – with a few notable exceptions, including Spanberger – have promised to eventually vote for Build Back Better in its current form. It is hard to overstate how much rests on that single-paragraph promise. A failure to pass Build Back Better would, at this point, amount to a betrayal so large it would disillusion an entire generation of young voters, and potentially fracture the Democratic party itself. The muted applause for BIF would be completely drowned out by recriminations, and the party would stumble into the midterms in open civil war, having failed to pull us back from the brink of worldwide catastrophe.Maybe Abigail Spanberger would hold on to her seat, but she would probably find herself isolated and ineffectual in a Republican Congress, desperately clinging to her fantasy of “normality” as she cranked up the A/C on another blistering summer day.Meanwhile, President Biden’s legacy would be sealed. For all his adulation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he would have failed to live up to the one test that cemented his predecessor as a hero. It’s worth remembering that FDR passed the New Deal over the violent protestations of Wall Street bankers, some of whom tried to stage a coup to replace him. Biden faces a similar test on Build Back Better: can he discipline the wealthiest and most dangerous industry in history, who will stop at nothing to make the “moderates” kill the bill? Can he wrest the helm of history from the fossil fuel executives, who would just as soon watch it all go down in flames?If he fails to pass Build Back Better, China’s taunts will ring true, though for the wrong reasons. The American political system will have proven itself incapable of passing extremely popular policies to address the climate crisis – not because it was too democratic, but because it was never democratic enough.With stakes this high, it’s no wonder the Progressive Caucus leader, Representative Pramila Jayapal, asked each “moderate” to look her in the eye as they signed their name to the Build Back Better promise. That look might have contained the anxiety of my entire generation. Not only our fear of being played, not only our dread of inheriting a squandered planet, but our ongoing hope – despite all evidence to the contrary – that our leaders may actually choose to lead.
      Daniel Sherrell is the author of Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World (Penguin Books) and a climate activist
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      Biden to unveil pledge to slash global methane emissions by 30%

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      Cop26Biden to unveil pledge to slash global methane emissions by 30% US-led alliance includes 90 countries but China, India and Russia have not joined the methane pact

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      Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editorTue 2 Nov 2021 02.26 EDTLast modified on Tue 2 Nov 2021 04.51 EDTUS president Joe Biden will try to underscore his green credentials by unveiling an action plan to control methane, regarded by the administration as the single most potent way to combat the climate crisis in the short term.Leading an alliance of 90 countries, including for the first time Brazil, he will on Tuesday set out new regulatory measures to limit global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of the decade.The alliance includes two-thirds of the global economy and half of the top 30 major methane emitter countries. China, India and Russia have not joined the pact known as the Global Methane Pledge.Cop26: Biden urges action on climate change and vows US will ‘lead by example’Read moreThe pledge was first announced in September but Biden’s officials have been working hard to increase the number of signatories and the momentum behind the pledge. The detailed US proposals may prove to be one of the lasting successes of Cop26 in Glasgow where Biden will announce his action plan.Many of the regulatory measures do not require Congressional approval, and so give Biden some short-term effective measures to which he can point.Biden will focus on new plans to limit methane emissions by the oil and gas industry in the US, reckoned to be responsible for 30% of the methane emissions in the US.A new Environment Protection Agency rule that regulates leak detection and repair in the oil industry repealed by Donald Trump will be restored and for the first time applied to new operations in gas, including regulation of natural gas produced as a by-product of oil production that is vented or flared.The Biden team hopes that 75% of all methane emissions will be covered.Cut methane emissions to rapidly fight climate disasters, UN report saysRead moreThe other major sources of methane in the US are municipal landfills, thousands of abandoned oil wells and coal mines, and finally agriculture.New rules, due to be phased in, will require companies to oversee and inspect 3m miles (4.8m km) of pipelines, including 300,000 miles (480,000km) of transmission lines and 2.3m miles (3.7m km) of lines inside cities. In Boston alone it is estimated that 49,000 tonnes of methane leak each year.The administration says it is working in concert with the EU and is using a mix of incentives, new disclosure rules and regulation. It stressed that the plan will create thousands of unionised jobs.02:33TopicsCop26Climate crisisJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Cop26: Biden urges action on climate change and vows US will ‘lead by example’

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      Cop26Cop26: Biden urges action on climate change and vows US will ‘lead by example’‘Right now, we are falling short,’ US president says, urging other world leaders to embark upon a shift to clean energy01:43Oliver Milman in New York and Nina Lakhani in GlasgowMon 1 Nov 2021 13.01 EDTLast modified on Mon 1 Nov 2021 16.06 EDTJoe Biden has warned that the climate crisis poses “the existential threat to human existence as we know it” and urged other world leaders to embark upon a transformational shift to clean energy, as questions linger over the US president’s ability to deliver this vision at home.‘Brazil is a green powerhouse’ claims Bolsonaro at climate change summit – liveRead moreBiden, addressing a sparse chamber at crucial UN climate talks that have begun in a frigid and drizzly Glasgow, said that the conference must act as a “kickoff of a decade of ambition and innovation to preserve our shared future”.The president added: “We meet with the eyes of history upon us. Will we do what is necessary? Or will we condemn future generations to suffer?”Biden’s administration is attempting to reassert America’s credibility at the gathering of nearly 200 countries in Scotland, known as Cop26, after Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US from the Paris climate agreement and his dismissal of climate science. Scientists have warned the world is badly off track to avoid disastrous climate change, with leaders of poorer, vulnerable countries using the talks to warn their populations face looming cataclysm.“We will demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but hopefully leading by the power of our example,” Biden said in his speech, in a tacit acknowledgement of Trump. “I know it hasn’t been the case, which is why my administration is working overtime to show our climate commitment is action not words.”“Right now, we are falling short, there’s no time to hang back, sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves,” the president continued. “This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes, an existential threat to human existence as we know it and every day we delay the cost of inaction increases.”Biden said that wealthy, major polluters such as the US have an “overwhelming responsibility” to aid smaller countries that are struggling to cope with growing floods, fires and heatwaves spurred by global heating.Before arriving in Glasgow, Biden also took aim at some other leading emitters for not doing enough to prevent global heating surpassing 1.5C. He said these countries are “not only Russia but China (which) basically didn’t show up in terms of commitments to deal with climate change. I found it disappointing myself”.At a side event, Biden also effectively apologized for his predecessor. “I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States – the last administration – pulled out of the Paris accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball,” Biden said.But climate activists, many of whom gathered outside the Glasgow venue that hosted more than 120 world leaders on Monday, argue that Biden is failing to live up to his own words. The president touted vast proposed climate legislation that would be the “most significant investment to deal with the climate crisis that any advanced nation has made, ever,” but the bill remains stalled in Congress, after being winnowed away by a senator who has extensive ties to fossil fuels.“Biden is at Glasgow empty handed, with nothing but words on paper,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise Movement. “It is humiliating and fails to meet the moment that we’re in.”Biden has also been attacked over his administration’s reluctance to drastically scale back oil and gas drilling in the US. The president’s narrative of “climate leadership” contradicts the daily suffering by communities on the frontline of gas and oil production in the US, activists say. In the first six months of the Biden administration, about 2,500 new oil and gas permits were authorized – a figure Trump’s administration took a year to reach.Speakers outside Cop26 on Monday – only 23 civil society observers were allowed in to hear the leaders’ speeches – included Black and Indigenous leaders whose communities are on the frontline of fossil fuel extraction impacts, including air pollution and contaminated drinking water and land across the US.Tom Goldtooth, Native American leader from the Indigenous Environmental Network, said: “We’re here as the original people of the US to denounce the polluters conference – it’s not a climate conference – it’s been taken over by corporate interests. If we Indigenous people don’t come we’ll be on the menu. We’re here to defend our people, we want to live.”Biden’s speech came shortly after an official opening of Cop26 that acknowledged the growing anguish over the escalating, and largely unchecked, climate crisis. Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, said “the people who will judge us are children not yet born”, adding “if we fail they will not forgive us”. Antonio Guterres, the secretary general of the UN, warned that “we are digging our own graves” due to the failure to dramatically cut planet-heating emissions.TopicsCop26Joe BidenClimate crisisUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Resilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and more | Robert Reich

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      OpinionUS politicsResilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and moreRobert ReichThe climate crisis, the economy, Biden’s struggle to enact his spending agenda. The list goes on. The lesson? Be strong Sun 31 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 Oct 2021 01.09 EDTI often tell my students that if they strive to achieve full and meaningful lives, they should expect failures and disappointments. We learn to walk by falling down again and again. We learn to ride a bicycle by crashing into things. We learn to make good friends by being disappointed in friendship. Failure and disappointment are prerequisites to growth.‘A deliberate, orchestrated campaign’: the real story behind Trump’s attempted coupRead moreThe real test of character comes after failures and disappointments. It is resilience: how easily you take failures, what you learn from them, how you bounce back.This is a hard lesson for high-achievers used to jumping over every hoop put in front of them. It’s also a hard lesson for people who haven’t had all the support and love they might have needed when growing up. In fact, it’s a hard lesson for almost everyone in a culture such as ours, that worships success and is embarrassed by failure and is inherently impatient.Why am I telling you this now? Because we have gone through a few very difficult years: Donald Trump’s racist nationalism and his attacks on our democracy, a painful reckoning with systemic racism, angry political divisions, a deadly pandemic accompanied by a recession, and climate hazards such as floods and wildfires.We assumed everything would be fine again once these were behind us. But we now find ourselves in a disorienting limbo. There is no clearly demarcated “behind us”. The pandemic still lurks. The economy is still worrisome. Americans continue to be deeply angry with each other. The climate crisis still poses an existential threat. Trump and other insurrectionists have not yet been brought to justice. Democracy is still threatened.And Biden and the Democrats have been unable to achieve the scale of change many of us wanted and expected.If you’re not at least a bit disappointed, you’re not human. To some, it feels like America is failing.But bear with me. I’ve learned a few things in my half-century in and around politics, and my many years teaching young people. One is that things often look worse than they really are. The media (including social media) sells subscriptions and advertising with stories that generate anger and disappointment. The same goes for the views of pundits and commentators. Pessimists always appear wiser than optimists.Another thing I’ve learned is that expectations for a new president and administration are always much higher than they can possibly deliver. Our political system was designed to make it difficult to get much done, at least in the short run. So the elation that comes with the election of someone we admire almost inevitably gives way to disappointment.A third thing: in addition to normal political constraints, positive social change comes painfully slowly. It can take years, decades, sometimes a century or longer for a society to become more inclusive, more just, more democratic, more aware of its shortcomings and more determined to remedy them. And such positive changes are often punctuated by lurches backward. I believe in progress because I’ve seen so much of it in my lifetime, but I’m also aware of the regressive forces that constantly threaten it. The lesson here is tenacity – playing the long game.The US should cut the Pentagon budget to fund social | Emma Claire FoleyRead moreWhich brings me back to resilience. We have been through a difficult time. We wanted and expected it to be over: challenges overcome, perpetrators brought to justice, pandemic ended, nation healed, climate saved, politics transformed. But none of it is over. The larger goals we are fighting for continue to elude us.Yet we must continue the fight. If we allow ourselves to fall into fatalism, or wallow in disappointment, or become resigned to what is rather than what should be, we will lose the long game. The greatest enemy of positive social change is cynicism about what can be changed.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver

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      Cop26Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver President faces challenges to reassert US credibility after Trump but critics say Biden’s actions have yet to match his wordsOliver Milman@olliemilmanFri 29 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 04.17 EDTWith no major climate legislation firmly in hand and international allies still smarting after four bruising years of Donald Trump, Joe Biden faces a major challenge to reassert American credibility as he heads to crucial UN climate talks in Scotland.Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed? | Kate AronoffRead moreThe US president, who has vowed to tackle a climate crisis he has described as an “existential threat” to civilization, will be welcomed to the Cop26 talks with a sense of relief following the decisions of his predecessor, who pulled his country out of the landmark Paris climate agreement and derided climate science as “bullshit”.But Biden, who departed to Europe on Thursday and arrived in Rome on Friday morning for a G20 summit, will head to Glasgow with his domestic climate agenda whittled away by a recalcitrant Congress and a barrage of criticism from climate activists who claim Biden’s actions have yet to match his words.This disconnect has perturbed delegates keen to see a reliable American partner emerge from the Trump era, amid increasingly dire warnings from scientists that “irreversible” heatwaves, floods, crop failures and other effects are being locked in by governments’ sluggish response to global heating.“The US is still the world’s largest economy, other nations pay attention to it, and we’ve never had a president more committed to climate action,” said Alice Hill, who was a climate adviser to Barack Obama. “But there is skepticism being expressed by other countries. They saw our dramatic flip from Obama to Trump and the worry is we will flip again. A lack of consistency is the issue.”Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who was a key architect of the Paris agreement, said that Biden had put climate “at the top of his agenda” and that US diplomacy has helped eke some progress from countries such as Saudi Arabia, South Africa and India.But she added the US had a “historical climate credibility problem” and that other leaders fret about its domestic political dysfunction and long-term commitment.“We do worry, because it has happened before and could happen again,” she said. “The US is the world’s largest historical emitter and never passed a significant climate bill. [Biden] has still got a long way to go to make up for Trump’s lost years.”In a show of soft American power, Biden is bringing a dozen of his cabinet members to Glasgow, where delegates from nearly 200 countries will wrangle over an agreement aimed at avoiding a disastrous 1.5C of global heating, a key objective of the Paris deal. But perhaps the most consequential figure to the American effort, rivaling the president himself, is remaining at home – the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.Manchin, a centrist Democrat, looms large at the talks having derailed the centerpiece of a landmark reconciliation bill that would slash US emissions. The White House still hopes the bill, which would be the first major climate legislation ever passed in the US, will help convince other leaders to also increase their efforts in Glasgow to head off climate breakdown.Cop26 delegates have become acutely aware of how Biden needs the vote of Manchin, who has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, to pass his agenda and help determine the future livability of places far from the West Virginia senator’s home state.“Bangladeshis probably know more about American politics than the average American does, people know about Joe Manchin,” said Saleemul Haq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, based in Bangladesh, which faces looming devastation from flooding. “Joe Manchin is in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry and is trying to cut everything the coal lobby doesn’t want.“Biden’s agenda is stuck in Congress with his own senators and he hasn’t delivered anything near what the US should deliver. It’s just words. His actions are woefully inadequate.”Biden has admitted that “the prestige of the United States is on the line” over the reconciliation bill, according to Democrats who met with the president, but publicly he has remained upbeat. When John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, said that the failure to secure the legislation would be like “President Trump pulling out of the Paris agreement, again”, Biden gently rebuked him, saying that Kerry had indulged in “hyperbole”.“In every single day of this administration we’ve been driving forward a whole of government approach that sets us up to go into this climate conference with an incredible deal of momentum,” said an administration official.The White House has pointed to the rejoining of the Paris accords, the resurrection of several environmental rules axed by Trump and what it is calling the “largest effort to combat climate change in American history” with the reconciliation bill, which is still set to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars in support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles.Progressives argue, however, that the Biden administration has done little to curb the fossil fuel industry, most notably in allowing two controversial oil projects, the Dakota Access pipeline and the Line 3 pipeline, to proceed. Just a week after the end of Cop26, the administration will auction off 80m acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, an area larger than the UK.“The president is doing so much, but he is simply not doing everything he can to deliver climate justice and save lives – and we need him to now,” said Cori Bush, a progressive Democratic congresswoman who has visited the site of the Line 3 construction in Minnesota.Protests have erupted in front of the White House over this record, with several young climate activists currently staging a hunger strike to demand Biden does more.“President Biden started very strongly by rejoining the Paris agreement but it’s been a frustrating past few months, things have slowed down,” said Jade Begay, a climate activist who is part of a White House advisory council. “Joe Manchin is holding hostage our survival on planet Earth for his own political career and people are really questioning if Biden will stick to his promises.”05:18The US has also declined to set an end date for the coal sector, unlike countries such as the UK and Germany. This position runs contrary to a key objective of the British government as Cop26 hosts, with Alok Sharma, the conference’s president, pledging the talks will help “consign coal to history”.Asked by the Guardian about the US’s stance on coal, Sharma said progress on the issue has been slow until now but “we want to see what is going to be possible” at the Glasgow summit. “I welcome the fact we now have an administration in the US that is very focused on taking climate action and supporting the international effort,” he said.Sharma added: “It is ultimately on world leaders to deliver. It is world leaders who signed up to the Paris agreement and … if I can put it like this, it is on them to collectively deliver at Cop.”TopicsCop26Joe BidenClimate crisisUS politicsUS foreign policyJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More