Media: President Biden will stay home from the UN climate summit

President Joe Biden will not participate in the UN climate summit COP29, which will be held from November 11 to 22 in Azerbaijan.

This is according to an unnamed source with insight into the US’s plans for the climate summit to Bloomberg.

Instead of Biden, the United States will be represented at COP29 by John Podesta, who is the president’s senior adviser on international climate policy, and several members of Biden’s government.

The climate summit takes place shortly after the US presidential election.

Regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans win the election, it will not be Joe Biden who will lead America’s climate policy forward.

He will thus step down when his presidential term expires in January.

It is not a matter of course that American presidents participate in the UN’s annual climate summits. Joe Biden ran in 2021 and 2022, but not in 2023.

Vice President Kamala Harris attended in his place.

With his participation in the first two years of his presidency, Biden marked that the United States was back at the forefront of the global climate fight after four years with Donald Trump, who pulled the country in the opposite direction.

Specifically, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement.

With the agreement, the participating countries at the climate summit in 2015 agreed to keep global warming below 2.0 degrees – and preferably below 1.5 degrees – compared to the temperature before industrialization.

When Biden became president, the United States rejoined the agreement.

Trump has warned that the Americans will leave the agreement again if he is voted into the White House again.

At the climate summit in Azerbaijan, the nearly 200 participating countries will, among other things, try to agree on how much money the rich countries must set aside for the climate efforts of the less prosperous countries.

The presidential election in the United States takes place on November 5. Vice President Kamala Harris is running for the Democrats against Republican Donald Trump.

/ritzau/