Biden faults China, Russia for absence at G-20 climate talks
The president made the remarks at a press conference in Rome
following the G-20 summit Sunday evening, ahead of his trip to the U.N. climate
conference in Glasgow on Monday.
President Joe Biden on Sunday said that G-20 leaders had
made "tangible progress" on shared challenges including climate
change, as pressure ramps up for the United States and other high
carbon-emitting countries to commit to more aggressive action at this week's
United Nations climate summit.
When asked at a press conference Sunday evening to respond
to disappointment from some experts that the G-20 climate commitments had not
gone far enough, Biden said the disappointment "relates to the fact that
Russia and China basically didn’t show up."
The president also expressed confidence that his
infrastructure and social safety net bills would pass in Congress next week,
which he said combined would allocate $900 billion towards climate initiatives.
The Biden administration used the G-20 in part to encourage
oil-rich countries to produce more as energy prices in the U.S. continue to
rise, leading to higher gas prices and electric bills for Americans. Biden has
been criticized by some climate experts for encouraging oil production, rather
than using the moment to accelerate the break away from oil dependency and transition
to clean energy.
"On the surface it seems like an irony," Biden
acknowledged, but said that the suggestion that "we will be able to move
to renewable energy overnight” was "just not rational."
His news conference wrapped up his three-day trip to Rome
for the Group of 20 summit — an annual gathering of international leaders
representing the world’s biggest economies — that included developments on a
wide range of global economic priorities, from the rollback of steel and
aluminum tariffs to development toward a global corporate minimum tax.
An early August poll from Gallup suggested that six months
into Biden’s presidency, global approval of the U.S. had rebounded from record
lows under the Trump administration. The median approval of U.S. leadership was
49 percent, up from 30 percent at the end of President Donald Trump’s term.
Still, Biden arrived in Rome looking to mend relations with
European allies like the French, who said they were blindsided by a deal
between the U.S. and Australia for the purchase nuclear-powered submarines.
Some European allies also felt they were not fully consulted on the U.S.
withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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