Biden, headed to the exit, sets an aggressive climate goal for the US

Washington: US President Joe Biden on Thursday announced an aggressive new climate goal for the United States, saying the country should seek to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 61% below 2005 levels by 2035.

The target is not binding and will almost certainly be disregarded by President-elect Donald Trump, who has called global warming a "scam." But Biden administration officials said they hoped it would encourage state and local governments to continue to cut the emissions that are rapidly heating the planet, even if the federal government pulls back.

The announcement caps four years of climate policies from a president who has sought to make global warming a signature focus of his administration. In a video address from the White House, Biden said his efforts, including pumping billions of dollars into clean energy technologies and regulating pollution from power plants and automobiles, amounted to "the boldest climate agenda in American history."

Biden said he expected progress in tackling climate change to continue after he had left office. "American industry will keep inventing and keep investing," he said. "State, local and tribal governments will keep stepping up. And together, we will turn this existential threat into a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform our nation for generations to come."

The new pledge of cutting emissions 61% to 66% below 2005 levels by 2035 is a significant update of commitments the United States had already made. In 2021, Biden promised that the country would cut its heat-trapping emissions at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. Scientists have said that global emissions must drop by roughly half this decade to keep global warming at relatively low levels.

But while U.S. emissions have been trending downward, the country is not currently on pace to meet even the earlier goal.

Last year, emissions were about 17% below 2005 levels, largely because electric utilities have retired many of their coal plants in favor of cheaper and cleaner gas, wind and solar power. But this year, emissions are expected to stay roughly flat, in part because rising electricity demand has led power companies to burn record amounts of gas, offsetting growth in renewable energy.

Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, every country agreed to submit a plan for curbing its greenhouse gas emissions, with the details left up to individual governments. Those pledges then get updated every five years. According to the Paris pact, countries are expected to issue a new round of plans before the next United Nations climate summit, scheduled for November in Belém, Brazil.

One recent study by the Rhodium Group, a research firm, estimated that the Biden administration's policies -- notably the hundreds of billions of dollars provided by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for wind, solar, nuclear, electric vehicles and other low-carbon technologies -- could help the country achieve a reduction of 38% to 56% below 2005 levels by 2035.

Going further than that would very likely require additional measures, such as speeding up regulatory approvals for new transmission lines and low-carbon energy projects, as well as actions from both the private sector and state governments.

Biden's latest target could prove much harder to achieve, however, if Trump follows through on his promises to reduce federal backing for clean energy and electric vehicles while repealing federal regulations such as those on methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can leak from oil and gas operations.

In a scenario where Trump rolled back most of Biden's climate policies, U.S. emissions might only fall 24% to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030, the Rhodium Group found.

Trump has also said he would once again pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, as he did during his first term. His spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement that Trump "will once again deliver clean air and water for American families while making America wealthy again."

Ali Zaidi, Biden's domestic adviser on climate change, and John Podesta, the White House adviser on clean energy, said state and local governments could help the nation get closer to the emissions goal by ratcheting up their climate policies. In recent years, California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York and Washington state have, for instance, required electric utilities to use more low-carbon power and adopted stricter energy-efficiency codes for buildings and policies to increase sales of electric cars.

On Thursday, a bipartisan coalition of governors from 24 states announced they would work together to try to meet the new goal. "This new collective goal will serve as our North Star," Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Environmental groups praised the new U.S. goal, although many had been urging the Biden administration to pledge even deeper cuts in emissions.

"As the world's largest historical emitter of heat-trapping gases, it's both fair and necessary for the United States to achieve and substantially strengthen this foundational goal in the future," said Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The target is also an effort to allay fears among other countries that the United States is an unreliable partner in tackling climate change. The U.S. has already twice pulled out of international climate pacts.

Jonathan Pershing, who served as deputy climate envoy in the Obama and Biden administrations, said that even if Trump ignored the new target, it sends a signal to other countries about where the United States intended to head in the longer term after Trump leaves office, assuming that future presidents decided to make climate change a higher priority.

Yet last month during the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, several House Republicans warned world leaders that the United States would not be beholden to international targets set by an outgoing administration and that the United States would expand support for oil and gas under Trump.

Several other countries have updated their formal climate pledges under the Paris Agreement in recent months. Britain announced that it would cut its emissions 81% below 1990 levels by 2035. Brazil announced that it would cut emissions at least 59% below 2005 levels by 2035, mainly by halting deforestation in the Amazon.

One recent study by Climate Action Tracker, a research group, found that if every country followed through on the pledges they have formally submitted so far, global average temperatures would be on track to rise roughly 2.6 degrees Celsius, or 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by the end of the century.

Under the Paris Agreement, by contrast, nations hoped to keep total global warming "well below" 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius, to limit the risks from climate-related disasters. (Earth is already about 1.2 degrees hotter, on average, than it was before the Industrial Revolution.)

Scientists have said that every fraction of a degree of warming brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.