Skip to content Skip to footer

Biden Opens Climate Summit With Pledge to Cut US Emissions in Half by 2030

Activists say the target isn’t ambitious enough to put the U.S. and the world on track to curbing dangerous warming.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks during a virtual Leaders Summit on Climate with 40 world leaders at the East Room of the White House on April 22, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

Part of the Series

President Joe Biden on Thursday has pledged to cut carbon emissions from the U.S. to half of what they were in 2005 by the end of this decade. His announcement came on the first day of a virtual climate summit hosted by Biden.

“I’ve talked to the experts, and I see the potential for a more prosperous and equitable future,” said Biden in remarks Thursday morning. “The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable. The cost of inaction just keeps mounting.”

In his speech, Biden emphasized the creation of high-quality, union jobs doing things like capping abandoned oil wells, restoring mines and installing electric vehicle charging stations across the country.

Biden’s pledge to reduce emissions is part of the U.S.’s share of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to the Paris Agreement and is double the goal of an emissions reduction of 25 percent by 2025 that President Barack Obama set during his presidency. Former President Donald Trump infamously withdrew from the Paris Agreement as one of his last actions in office.

“Many would think that that’s not doable. But I would argue that there’s opportunities for us to be able to be very aggressive in what it is going to take for that opportunity,” Biden’s national climate adviser Gina McCarthy told NPR. “This is not a challenge that we should shy away from.”

The U.S. has steadily been decreasing its carbon emissions but at a sluggish rate; we’re on track to hit only 14 to 18 percent emissions below 2005 levels by 2025, missing Obama’s original goal. Research has shown that, in order to slash emissions in half in less than nine years, the coal industry will need to disappear completely.

Still, climate activists say that Biden’s NDC is not enough to avoid a catastrophic amount of climate change and global warming.

The U.S. Climate Fair Share Project, backed by a coalition of over 175 climate organizations called the U.S. Climate Action Network, calls on Biden to cut domestic emissions by 70 percent of what they were in 2005. They also call for the U.S. to contribute its “fair share” by committing to helping developing countries to cut emissions, in total, by 195 percent — in other words, working to cut more than the U.S.’s own share of emissions.

“This isn’t just about doing what’s right, it’s about not surpassing the 1.5 degree threshold” of global warming that climate scientists have warned is a dangerous level of warming, said Sriram Madhusoodanan, director of Corporate Accountability’s U.S. Climate Campaign, in a statement. “Without keeping fossil fuels in the ground, drastically reducing emissions immediately, and advancing real, accessible solutions at scale, we are on track to blow past the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

Though Biden has made lofty promises on the campaign trail with regard to climate, he has still, in many ways, refused to cut ties with the oil and gas industry. Meanwhile, before the pandemic hit, oil and gas production was soaring, which Biden has done little to address, climate advocates say.

“Both the NDC and the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure plan fail to halt new fossil fuel infrastructure, including destructive oil and gas pipelines across the country. Biden has yet to take action to limit U.S. fossil fuel exports,” said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Energy Justice program, in a statement.

“And while President Biden has implemented a laudable moratorium on new federal oil and gas leasing,” Su continued, “he has yet to match the decisive leadership of other countries such as Denmark, which has reached broad agreement to cancel ongoing leasing, ban all future oil and gas licensing, and set a final phase-out date of 2050 for all fossil fuel extraction.”

Progressive legislators, meanwhile, have put out their own climate legislation to push Biden to go further in his ambitions. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) reintroduced their Green New Deal resolution on Tuesday, laying out a bold road map for climate action with an emphasis on justice.

Though it calls for a similar emissions reductions timeline to Biden’s NDC, the resolution and related proposals go further in their calls for the funding of climate-related projects. “Do we intend on sending a message to the Biden administration that we need to go bigger and bolder?” Ocasio-Cortez said at a press conference unveiling the legislation. “The answer is absolutely yes.”

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 130 new monthly donors before midnight tonight.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy