Nations Pledge to End Deforestation in Bid to Protect ‘Lungs of Our Planet’

Day 1 of the international summit once described as the “last best hope” to slow climate change brought few actual commitments to slow climate change.

Leaders of two of the world’s biggest polluters, China and Russia, did not attend in person. President Biden came with a large delegation and a large promise to reduce U.S. emissions, but was unable to show the world that he could deliver concrete legislation to achieve those cuts. India announced ambitious new targets to expand renewable energy, though nothing about how soon it would retire its vast network of coal-burning power plants.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration will unfurl a long list of climate initiatives aimed at showing the world that it can take action even when there is no consensus in Congress. The most significant announcement will be plans to heavily regulate methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can warm the atmosphere 80 times faster than carbon dioxide in the short term and one that is produced by oil and natural gas operations.

But the most striking feature so far of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, known as COP26, has been anger, and more of it is expected on Tuesday.

There was barely contained rage at the podium on Monday, especially from leaders of some of the smallest, most vulnerable countries in the world.

There was unbridled rage outside. Youth climate activists responded to speeches inside with chants of “No more blah blah blah.”

Mr. Biden spent much of Monday talking up his “build back better” climate and social policy proposals. But in the face of congressional opposition, his administration has abandoned the centerpiece policy of that bill, a measure that would incentivize the power sector to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It pulled back because of objections by Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a state that is heavily reliant on coal. Even a much pared-down version of the president’s plan is in jeopardy.

Tensions over money will continue to sharpen through the week. Poorer countries will demand more aid from wealthier ones whose emissions are principally responsible for temperature rises so far.

India called for a $1 trillion commitment from wealthy countries to help developing nations make the transition to renewable energy. Small island nations threatened by rises in sea levels petitioned an international court to force the richest parts of the world to pay them damages.

But trees will get a break — in the future. By Tuesday morning, more than 100 countries that contain most of the world’s forests will promise to halt deforestation by 2030.

For all the promises and plans made so far, however, none of the leaders present dared to claim that it was nearly enough.

GLASGOW — At the global climate summit, President Biden has called for weaning the world from fossil fuels that cause global warming, which he called an “existential threat” to humanity. But in recent days he has also urged the world’s largest oil producers to pump more of those fuels.

The incongruity was on center stage both at the summit taking place in Glasgow, and in Rome this past weekend during the Group of 20 gathering of leaders from the world’s largest economies. The president’s comments highlighted the political and economic realities facing politicians as they grapple with climate change.

“On the surface, it seems like an irony,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference on Sunday. “But the truth of the matter is — you’ve all known, everyone knows — that the idea we’re going to be able to move to renewable energy overnight,” he said, was “just not rational.”

Mr. Biden’s words have drawn fire from energy experts and climate activists, who say the world cannot afford to ramp up oil and natural gas production if it wants to avert catastrophic levels of warming. Environmental groups are intensely watching to see how the president intends to meet his ambitious goal of halving the nation’s emissions, compared with 2005 levels, by the end of this decade.

A recent International Energy Agency report found that countries must immediately stop new oil, gas and coal development if they hope to keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 Celsius above preindustrial levels, the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth faces irreversible damage. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius.

“We are in a climate crisis. There is no room for the left hand and the right hand to be doing different things,” said Jennifer Morgan, the executive director at Greenpeace International. “It’s not credible to say you’re fighting for 1.5 degrees while you’re calling for increased oil production.”

With gasoline prices rising above $3.30 a gallon nationwide, Mr. Biden over the weekend urged major energy-producing countries with spare capacity to boost production, part of a larger effort to pressure Russia and the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase the supply of oil.

He was joined by President Emmanuel Macron of France, whose country hosted the 2015 meeting in Paris where 200 countries agreed to collectively tackle global warming.

The Biden administration plans to announce on Tuesday that it will heavily regulate methane, a potent greenhouse gas that spews from oil and natural gas operations and can warm the atmosphere 80 times as fast as carbon dioxide in the short term.

For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency intends to limit the methane coming from roughly one million existing oil and gas rigs across the United States. The federal government previously had rules that aimed to prevent methane leaks from oil and gas wells built since 2015, but the Trump administration rescinded them. President Biden intends to restore and strengthen them, administration aides said.

At the United Nations climate summit this week, Mr. Biden is trying to persuade other countries to reduce emissions from fossil fuels that are heating the planet to dangerous levels.

The methane announcement comes as Mr. Biden faces intense pressure internationally and at home to show that the United States, the nation that has pumped the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is serious about mitigating climate change.

Mr. Biden has set an aggressive target of cutting the emissions produced by the United States this decade about 50 percent below 2005 levels, but legislation to help him meet that goal is stalled in Congress. That leaves the administration to rely on regulations and other executive actions.

Every corner of the world will feel the effects of global warming, but they will be most drastic for small island nations — particularly low-lying ones that could be swallowed whole by rising seas.

Yet the fate of those countries rests not in their own hands, but in those of much larger nations that emit the vast majority of greenhouse gases, and whose economies benefit from producing or burning fossil fuels.

Leaders of island nations made impassioned appeals at the U.N. climate summit, arguing not only that the rest of the world should act in its own self-interest, but that it has an obligation specifically to them.

“The existence of our low-lying neighbors is not negotiable,” said Frank Bainimarama, the prime minister of Fiji.

The world faces a choice between “our grandchildren’s future” and corporate greed, he said, insisting that the international target of keeping average temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius is feasible.

“All that’s missing is courage to act,” he said.

Several leaders called for the conference to discuss the idea of wealthier, more polluting nations paying damages to poorer ones that contribute little to the problem but suffer disproportionately from it.

Among them was Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, one of the small island countries that this week turned to an international court seeking such damages.

Island leaders also scolded others for discussing global warming, and their responses to it, in deceptive terms.

The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, poked holes in the climate promises of some countries that are based on technologies that don’t yet exist.

“This is at best reckless,” she said, and “at worst dangerous.”

From the perspective of low-lying countries, she said, “if our existence is to mean anything we must act.”

Mr. Bainimarama took a swipe at phrases that are tossed around by companies and countries that profit from fossil fuels.

“Clean coal, responsible natural gas,” he said, “are all figments.”

It was the kind of spotlight associated with a certain other young climate activist: A hall full of world leaders and a speaking slot preceding the secretary general of the United Nations.

The woman in the spotlight was not Greta Thunberg, but Txai Suruí, a 24-year-old Indigenous climate activist from Brazil, making her first appearance on the world stage. On the opening day of the global climate summit in Glasgow, she made an eloquent appeal drawing attention to the devastating deforestation of the Amazon.

“The earth is speaking,” Ms. Suruí said. “She tells us that we have no more time.”

“The animals are disappearing,” she added. “The rivers are dying, and our plants don’t flower like they did before.”

Ms. Suruí told the heads of state in the audience that they were “closing your eyes to reality” and their timetables for reducing carbon emissions and scaling back the use of fossil fuels were not adequate.

“It’s not 2030 or 2050,” she said. “It’s now.”

Ms. Suruí’s speech at the summit came as organizers faced criticism for a notable omission from the program: Ms. Thunberg, who said that she had not been invited, but joined scores of protesters on Monday outside the conference hall.

Recalling to world leaders the murder of one of her childhood friends, who she said had tried to combat deforestation, Ms. Suruí said that she had witnessed the toll of climate change firsthand.

“Indigenous peoples are on the front line of the climate emergency,” she said. “We must be at the center of the decisions happening here.”

Ms. Suruí said that her father, a tribal chief, had taught her “we must listen to the stars, the moon, the wind, the animals and the trees.”