Biden climate summit: When is US hosting global talks?
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US president Joe Biden is hosting a virtual leaders summit on the climate crisis on Earth Day next week.
It’s hoped that the event will spark more ambitious targets in reducing global emissions, which are rapidly heating the planet and bringing extreme and unpredictable events.
When is Biden holding the climate talks?
The talks, which will be live-streamed to the public, will take place on 22 and 23 April.
The US is also expected to announce a much-tougher 2030 emissions target around the summit.
Who is attending?
The Biden administration has invited Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a signal that the United States is willing to put the climate crisis above even its most strained international relations.
Leaders of some of the world’s top climate-change sufferers, do-gooders and backsliders round out the rest of the 40 invitations being delivered on Friday. The climate summit is being viewed as a key event this year ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP26, this November in Glasgow.
Climate scientists warn that global heating needs to be kept well below 2C, above pre-industrial levels, with an aim for the increasingly ambitious 1.5C, to avoid the worst of climate breakdown.
The Leaders Summit and COP26 are both aimed at catalysing efforts that keep that 1.5C goal within reach, the White House said.
The Biden administration intentionally looked beyond its international partners for the talks, an administration official said.
“It’s a list of the key players and it’s about having some of the tough conversations and the important conversations,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP.
“Given how important … this issue is to the entire world, we have to be willing to talk about it and we have to be willing to talk about it at the high levels.”
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