Joe Biden warns world faces ‘pivotal moment’ in fight against climate crisis - as it happened
The US president assured the summit the US would hit its climate targets by 2030 and apologised for pulling out of the Paris agreement This liveblog is now closed Thats it from us for today, but well be back liveblogging tomorrow, which is food and agriculture day. Summary: US president Joe Biden addressed the conference, asking world leaders to do more. He used the speech to unveil a number of new measures, including a plan to slash emissions of methane in the US, support new early warning systems for extreme weather disasters in Africa, and a deal to back new solar and wind projects in Egypt in return for the country decommissioning gas power plants and cutting its emissions. The speech was briefly interrupted by youth and Indigenous activists from the US, calling on Biden to stop pushing fossil fuel extraction. Grant Shapps, the UK business secretary, said that the UK would continue to use and develop North Sea oil and gas as long as it generated lower carbon dioxide emissions than that created by importing gas from overseas. US House speaker Nancy Pelosi told Cop27: We have left incrementalism in the dust, this is about transformation. She said she hoped Cop27 would help save the world for the children. Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub said people who call for the end of the oil and gas industry have no clue what that would mean and refused to say whether she accepted her companys role in climate disasters. An analysis of delegates found that there had been an explosion in fossil fuel lobbyists attending the climate summit this year, with 636 in attendance, a rise of more than 25% since Cop26 in Glasgow. Gas producers and their financial backers have been accused of using Cop27 as an opportunity to rebrand natural gas as a transition fuel rather than a fossil fuel. Medics from across the world have just staged a protest to highlight how climate carnage is killing their patients, including performing CPR on an inflatable globe . As Joe Biden drops into the Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Mohamed Adow, Director of Power Shift Africa, said: Joe Biden comes to Cop27 and makes new promises but his old promises have not even been fulfilled. Id rather have one apple in my hand than the promise of five that never come. Biden is throwing crumbs into lots of different pots. That might sound impressive but its not the help that is needed. We need straightforward funding that directly goes to communities and countries. He is like a salesman selling goods with endless small print. Proper support comes in short words that are easily understandable, not a long list of caveats and explanations about which bizarre scheme they are throwing some scraps into. After six years as the big cheese of UN climate negotiations, Patricia Espinosa has been enjoying walking the halls of power, not quite as an ordinary Joe, and apparently not following the negotiations too closely. It has felt just amazing. I knew that as the [UNFCCC] executive secretary that I was missing so much, and its been a really wonderful experience. Espinosa may not be paying close attention, but were starting to see developed countries push back against this years hot topic, loss and damage , after developing nations laid out a unified case for why a funding mechanism separate to climate adaptation and mitigation was needed to address the climate catastrophes that cant be averted. The US in particular has been accused of being a bad faith actor due to its long track record of disrupting and delaying progress on the issue. Yes I can understand why people are saying that. Their reluctance on having an agenda item on loss and damage, and the fact that we are only now starting to really seriously talk about it is really very surprising, because the losses and damages have been there for all these years. But while developing countries and climate justice activists want a firm pledge to create a loss and damage mechanism at Cop27 , Espinosa thinks were not there yet. It is possible that there is a need to have some more conversations about what we mean by loss and damage and what we want to address. Last but not least, some argue that once again were seeing developed nations focused on loans rather than grants for developing countries. Thats absolutely not fair. The issue of finance is really at the centre of the process and the fact that the pledge for mobilising $100bn has not been delivered is really very disappointing. It is very clear that the international financial system is not responding to the current needs of the world, especially of the most vulnerable countries that are bearing a lot of the costs. So that has to change. By the way, Espinosa makes an appearance in the film released by the Guardian this week, with our colleague Fiona Harvey looking at the way forward. Check it out. You can watch Joe Bidens speech here: Four protesters holding a banner which read people vs fossils interrupted the speech of Joe Biden, the US president, to Cop27 . The protesters were youth and Indigenous activists from the US, and they were calling on Biden to stop pushing fossil fuel extraction. They spoke with the Guardian shortly after being escorted out of the plenary hall by security staff. The president, members of Congress and the state department have come to this international forum on climate change proposing false solutions that will not get us to 1.5C, said Big Wind, 29, a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe in Wyoming. Youth and Indigenous activists from the US interrupted Joe Biden to demand that he stop pushing fossil fuel extraction pic.twitter.com/nGuvxr22oo We need to accelerate the transition but thats not going to happen by partnering with big polluters like Amazon and PepsiCo, and so we needed to call that out, he said, in reference to an announcement earlier this week by US climate envoy John Kerry, the Bezos Earth Fund, PepsiCo and others about plans to design an energy transition accelerator. Biden referenced Indigenous peoples in his speech, yet has failed to leverage his power to support them directly through direct access to funds needed by communities to adapt to the climate crisis, said Big Wind. Jamie Wefald, a 24-year-old climate activist from Brooklyn, New York, said: Joe Biden is promoting false solutions to the climate crisis, he is no climate hero. We wanted to create a moment on behalf of all frontline communities in the global north and south to demand real climate solutions. Also in Sharm el-Sheikh briefly this week was James Cartlidge, the UKs exchequer secretary to the Treasury. He defended the governments record on climate finance, and said the pause in debt repayments that the UK was working to bring about would be a major help to some of the worst afflicted countries. These are countries really in the firing line of the climate emergency, that need to focus all their resources on rebuilding their country [to cope with the impact of extreme weather]. It would be ideal if their debt could be paused so that they can focus on dealing with the climate emergency, he said. This is really important, from a UK point of view. He said the UK was looking at ways to extend this debt suspension to as many countries as possible that need it. He reiterated the UKs commitment to 11.6bn of climate finance for developing countries, of which 4.5bn would be focused on helping poor countries adapt to the impact of extreme weather, by 2025. There needs to be a real focus on adaptation, he said. The UK was also a contributor to the just energy transition partnership in South Africa, he noted, where people working in the coal industry are being helped to move to working in the expansion of renewable energy. The UK is the largest contributor to the partnership, with a commitment of about 1.8bn. Thats the sort of policy we are going to need in the future, he said. Countries need to make that transition to green energy. We need to scale up support for existing workforces in fossil fuels. The feedback on the partnership at this Cop has been very positive. The just energy transition partnership in South Africa was a key achievement of Cop26, hosted by the UK in Glasgow last November, he said. Its very important that the UK has been driving this effort. The prime minister is really passionate about making the UK a key country for green finance, he said. Its a really important message I want to give, that net zero offers a national opportunity for growth and investment. The UK can be number one in green finance, green investment and green technology. Earlier today, Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub claimed that Al Gore tells me not to build direct air capture to take greenhouse gases out of the air. We checked the claim with the former US vice president, who said it was incorrect. In a statement, Gore said: That is 100% incorrect. I have told her and other fossil fuel CEOs to stop misleading the public into thinking that an early-stage, prohibitively expensive technology somehow mitigates their reckless practice of spewing heat-trapping pollution into the sky as if it were an open sewer. Experimenting with the possibility that DAC may eventually play a meaningful role is responsible and I support it. But unrealistic and deceptive claims that it can serve as an excuse to continue destroying humanitys future is dangerously irresponsible. My colleague Nina Lakhani managed to get some footage of the small group of protesters who interrupted Biden. The banner they are holding up seems to read People vs Fossil fuels. Contrary to our earlier reporting, they dont seem to be led out of the hall, but simply resume their seats. Youth and Indigenous activists from the US interrupted Joe Biden to demand that he stop pushing fossil fuel extraction pic.twitter.com/nGuvxr22oo Cherelle Blazer of the Sierra Club, the USs oldest grassroots environment organisation, welcomed his speech and particularly the section on methane. She said: In addition to the success of the Inflation Reduction Act and the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, were encouraged by the Biden administration announcing this long-awaited methane rule and critically needed federal contractor emissions guidelines, both of which, if implemented justly, are an important part of the United States being able to reach its climate goals. These rules must not be the end of progress but rather a continuation of the work that will be built upon in the coming months and years. Tim Benton, director of the environment and society programme at Chatham House, welcomed some focus on the global food system, which is fragile and in urgent need of transformational change. Bidens initiative has some good investments, that whilst welcome and every little helps are a drop in the ocean of requirements. Investments in climate-smart agriculture are always a good idea, but we need to focus on transforming food systems to deliver better outcomes for nutrition, health and biodiversity, not in scaling up industrial scale agriculture to make it resilient to heatwaves and droughts alone. The issue of methane from agriculture seems conspicuously absent still from the methane pledges. As agricultural emissions of methane are the same scale of emissions from fuel production, it remains an omission. Meanwhile Bernice Lee, research director for futures, at Chatham House think tank, is focussed on the US-China relationship. She told the Guardian: All eyes are on Biden to fulfil the USs finance promises. It is an open wound that the US will keep rubbing salt into unless it is done and delivered. It is also time to harness the US-China geopolitical dynamics into climate delivery. Let the race for low carbon solutions and models begin in earnest ... the hope is that Biden and Xi will not only play to the domestic audiences but also the worlds climate-converted citizens. The key is for the two sides to keep channels for climate cooperation open despite the toxic atmospherics. Reaction to Bidens speech is varied. Daisy Dunne, at Carbon Brief, has pointed out that there was no reference to the issue of loss and damage in Bidens speech, despite it being one of the hot topics at the conference. No mention of #LossAndDamage in Biden's special address to #COP27 ... ...although he did mention US supports the Global Shield project, which other countries have spoken about in the context of loss and damage funding (see this thread by @Josh_Gabbatiss ) https://t.co/3p3deqgMKp Biden is winding up now. Lets reach out and take the future in our hands. A planet preserved, a more equitable, prosperous world for our children, that is why we are here, that is what we are working towards. Im confident we can do it. Thank you, and may God bless you all. And then he heads off stage, to warm applause. He pays tribute to the young people who campaign on this. Young people feel the urgency of the climate crisis and feel it deeply. They wont allow us to fail. Theres a loud whooping in the hall, and Biden pauses briefly. Then some people are led out. He resumes his speech. If we are to win this fight, we can no longer plead ignorance to consequence of actions and repeat our mistakes, Biden tells Cop27 . If we can accelerate actions on these gamechangers, we can reach our goal. But to permanently bend [the] emissions curve, every nation must step up. The US has acted, everyone has to act, its a duty and responsibility of global leadership. He is speaking now about the natural world and land use. Forests are more valuable when they are preserved then when they are destroyed. He calls for a slowdown in deforestation. He is also talking about shipping. Folks, its going to take all of us. He talks about the urgent need to reduce methane. Cutting methane by at least 30% by 2030 can be our best chance to keep in reach of the 1.5C target. Biden says there will now be new regulations on methane in US. All told these steps will reduce US methane emissions from cover sources by 87% below 2005 levels by 2030. I know this has been a difficult few years, says Biden. The interconnected challenges we face seem all consuming. He blames Russia for energy spikes and costs. Against this backdrop its more important than ever to double down on our climate commitments. He urges the audience: Lets build on global climate progress. The science is devastatingly clear, we need to make vital progress by the end of this decade.