U.S. back with ‘guns blazing’ on climate issue

By Andrea Shalal

ROME (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury’s prime climate adviser mentioned that renewed U.S. engagement on climate change below President Joe Biden has helped put the issue on the prime of the Group of 20 agenda and is galvanizing recent commitments to scale back emissions to web zero.

Climate change will function prominently on this weekend’s G20 summit in Rome, mentioned John Morton, a former non-public fairness adviser and Treasury’s first climate counselor. He additionally forecast a spate of latest commitments from nations and the non-public sector forward of the COP26 U.N. climate convention that begins on Monday in Glasgow.

“That’s an indication of the seriousness with which the global community is now taking climate change,” he instructed Reuters in an interview on Friday. “And obviously, this administration has come back in guns blazing on the issue in really important ways.”

At their weekend assembly, leaders of the Group of 20 richest nations will decide to step up their efforts to restrict international warming at 1.5 levels Celsius, in keeping with a draft assertion seen by Reuters.

Morton, who coordinates climate-focused work throughout Treasury divisions, mentioned he hoped Biden’s $1.75 trillion spending plan https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-are-climate-change-provisions-us-budget-bill-framework-2021-10-28, with $555 billion in clear vitality tax credit and different climate-related measures, could be finalized in coming days.

“It would be an absolutely historic investment into climate change, by far the biggest in American history, and it would supercharge the efforts around the transition,” he mentioned.

That spending comes on prime of separate measures included in a separate $1 trillion infrastructure invoice, however a number of of the administration’s authentic proposals had been killed in congressional negotiations.

Biden’s framework features a slew of fresh vitality tax credit score, investments geared toward serving to the United States adapt to the worst impacts of climate change, and funding for incentives meant to spur new home provide chains and know-how.

Morton mentioned reducing emissions and transitioning to a net-zero financial system was an “economic imperative” required to make sure continued U.S. competitiveness, particularly given huge investments being made by different nations like China.

“The benefit of this legislation is that it puts in place the incentives and the building blocks to actually begin addressing that issue,” he mentioned, referring to tax credit and incentives within the spending invoice which might be geared toward advancing applied sciences similar to photo voltaic, wind and batteries.

“Shame on us if we don’t take advantage of those economic opportunities at home and create the jobs that we know will be the jobs of the next decades,” he mentioned.

Washington can be working with worldwide companions to spend money on accelerating efforts to transition away from coal, Morton mentioned.