More virtuous than me you die! The large countries, among the most polluters on the planet, engaged in a competition based on promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, at the virtual summit against global warming, meeting this Thursday 22 and Friday. April 23, by US President Joe Biden. From Russian President Vladimir Putin to King Salman of Saudi Arabia, including Chinese number one Xi Jinping, whose vast territory is the world's leading polluter with its coal factories, to the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro, patent destroyer of the Amazon rainforest, all have shown themselves to be resolute defenders of the environment. China promising neutrality by 2060, Brazil vowing to stop deforestation.
Biden himself - at the head of the second most emitting power of noxious gases - posting a doubling of the target set by Obama at the Paris summit five years ago, or an emissions reduction of 50 to 52% (instead of 26 to 28%) by 2030, compared to 2005. It was followed in this field by Canada, South Korea, in particular.
Turn the page Trump
After a four-year absence from America caused by the climate skeptic
Donald Trump out of Paris agreement, would there be a Biden magic effect?
Obviously, diplomatic ulterior motives are playing their part.
"Awareness of the major challenge of climate change is real: yesterday, the world had to survive the nuclear danger, today it is the climate, the powers must be in this game", analyzes the geopolitologist Dominique Moïsi, advisor of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
To read also Climate: "We have the power to avoid a disaster", assures the great voice of the COP21
Sign of this new imperative, the presence, by interposed screens, of about forty heads of state or government, including the Chinese and Russian leaders who are nevertheless in a virtual cold war with Washington.
As if these actors had put their
tensions over human rights or the trade war, time to talk about climate.
Another effect of this pressure exerted in recent weeks on capitals by John Kerry, the former Secretary of State (
Editor's note: the Minister of Foreign Affairs
) of Obama, appointed special envoy on the climate by Biden: the European Union, already the most active in this field, has further raised its ambition.
The day before the summit, the European Parliament passed a law setting at least 55% the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to 1990. Some within the EU have also regretted that this solidarity commitment of the Twenty-Seven has been somewhat relegated to the background by the media show of Joe Biden.
John Kerry's role
But isn't there a risk that the soufflé will fall once the screens are turned off?
True to her image, Greta Thunberg, who was invited to the US Congress at the same time, severely urged leaders to walk the talk.
Because these objectives involve restrictive and costly measures, taxes or subsidies, and sometimes painful changes in “old” industries, such as shale gas or the automobile industry in the United States.
The climate emergency risks giving way to the need to revive the economic machine after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dominique Moïsi believes that we can be "reasonably optimistic".
"The fact that Biden has entrusted this file to a political heavyweight like John Kerry strongly commits him," he judges.
If he doesn't follow his roadmap, Kerry will be more cumbersome for him than he was
Nicolas Hulot for President Macron! "
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