Remarks by President Biden at Virtual Meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate
SEPTEMBER 17, 2021
Location: South Court Auditorium

8:33 A.M. EDT 

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s good to see you all.  Good morning.  Thank you, Secretary Blinken.  And a special thanks to Special Envoy Kerry.  John has been a friend for a long time, and I have absolute trust in his leadership on this issue.

We’re honored to host all of you today as a — as a follow up to the Leaders Summit on Climate we hosted back in April.

That summit made good on a commitment that I made to the American people that the United States would return immediately to the world stage and address the climate crisis.

I wanted to show that we’re at an inflection point, and that there’s a real consensus — a real consensus that while the climate crisis poses an existential threat, there is a silver lining.

The climate crisis also presents real and incredible economic opportunities to create jobs and lift up the standard of living of people around the world.

And I want to thank you and your efforts so far that I — and I need — I need to tell you the consequences of inaction.  But you all actually know it.  It’s somewhat presumptuous for me to say this.

But over the last two weeks, I’ve traveled across the United States to see the damage and destruction from record hurricanes, record floods, and wildfires.

China continues across — excuse me — climate continues to change across Europe, Africa, and Latin America.  And we’ve — and you’ve endured massive flooding.  Fires have raged across Australia and the Amazon and the Russian tundra.  In Siberia — this sounds — I found it almost unbelievable — temperatures reached 118 degrees — 118 degrees — inside the Arctic Circle.

The finding from the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents a code red for humanity.  And the time to act is really narrowing, as the Secretary just pointed out, to get to — close to a point of no return.  We don’t have a lot of time.

So we have to act — all of us.  We have to act, and we have to act now.

When we met in April, we agreed to strengthen our efforts as we head to COP26 in Glasgow.

Today, I’ve called us together again to candidly assess our progress.

I’m grateful to those of you who’ve — who’ve strengthened your contributions under the Paris Climate Agreement and put forward ambitious targets for 2030. 

And thanks to your leadership, countries representing more than half of the global GDP are committed to taking steps that will keep us within reach of our joint pursuit of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But — but we know there’s still a lot of work to do, and, if anything, our job has — in my view — has grown more urgent.

The countries representing the Major Economies Forum account for 80 percent of global emissions.

Without adequate commitments from every nation in this room, the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees slips through our hands.  And that’s a disaster.

And here’s what I believe we have to do right now and what we — we’re advancing here in the United States: We have to bring to Glasgow — we have to bring to Glasgow our highest possible ambitions. 

Those that have not yet done so, time is running out.

For our part, in America, I’m working to pass historic investment in — to modernize our more climate-resilient infrastructure, to build a clean energy future that creates millions of jobs and ushers in new industries of the future.

As part of this work, the United States has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 50 and 52 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030.