When news broke on Friday evening that the White House was cutting the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP) from President Biden’s budget to appease Sen. Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia Democrat, environmental experts were quick to identify the global implications for the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Since the United States is the world’s largest economy and the biggest cumulative contributor to climate change, if it doesn’t go to the U.N. climate summit next month with policies in place to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by Biden’s target of 50 percent by 2030, it won’t be in a good position to ask other large emitters to increase the ambition of their climate plans. And, without such an increase, the world will remain on its current trajectory to blow past the 2°C of global warming that scientists have said it is essential to stay below.
By Ben Adler. Yahoo News. October 18, 2021.
