Expect a Biden Victory Lap Starting at Egypt Climate Summit

The battle lines are drawn: It’s the GOP versus the COP. President Biden on Friday will launch a global victory lap by spending a day in Egypt at a global climate summit known as COP 27. Back home, meanwhile, Republicans are vowing to use their hoped-for House majority to encourage increased fossil fuel production. Today at Sharm el-Sheikh Mr. Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, blamed Speaker Pelosi’s solidarity visit to Taipei for his failure to negotiate emissions standards with the world’s largest polluter, Communist China. He also announced a plan for American corporations to remit funds to developing countries to deal with the effects of climate change. The need to help poorer countries cope with climate-related pledges tops the agenda at this week’s 27th gathering of the United Nations-led Conference of the Parties. The idea is to transfer wealth to “The South” from the developed world, known as “The North.”PepsiCo, Microsoft, Bank of America, and others have already signed on to a scheme that would award them “carbon credits” for financing projects to rid developing countries of coal mines and such. Mr. Kerry acknowledged that the carbon credit scheme is plagued by abuse and graft, but he promised to do better. Back in America, Republicans are set to combat rising inflation and economic doldrums by opposing Mr. Biden’s efforts to end gas-related emissions. Those efforts, GOP leaders argue, have come at the expense of energy independence, while America relies on imports from fossil fuel producers like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In June Representative Kevin McCarthy, the likely next House speaker, released a plan calling for increased oil and gas production at home, removal of drilling permit regulations, and seeking to reduce American reliance on Chinese and Russian materials that are crucial for wind and solar energy.On Sunday Mr. Biden said at an election rally that there will be “no more drilling” even as Senator Manchin of West Virginia said the president was “divorced from reality” for telling California fundraisers last week that he would shut coal plants “all across America.” Mr. Biden’s openly expressed war on fossil fuels so late in the election cycle was widely seen as a political blunder. The White House tried to mitigate the fallout, saying his words were “twisted.” Yet, the president’s comments did not seem to hurt Democrats in crucial Pennsylvania, a coal-producing state, so the president is likely to feel vindicated. Even before the failure of Republicans to ride a “red wave” Tuesday, Mr. Biden was expected to be warmly received at Sharm el-Sheikh. There, his agenda is more welcome than it is among wide swaths of voters at home. Following the Democrats’ better than expected showing Tuesday, he is expected to double down on green pledges.The UN-led COP meetings aim to limit carbon emissions to assure that the globe’s temperature will not rise by more than 2.7 degrees at the end of the century. The target, set at Paris in 2015, is already considered unrealistic, as countries have widely missed their own emission-reducing targets.“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” an exasperated UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said Sunday in his opening speech at Sharm el-Sheikh. Climate activists have criticized the gabfest, saying COP pledges are made but never fulfilled. A 19-year-old Swede known as a climate leader, Greta Thunberg, declined to participate, dubbing the gathering “green washing.”While Mr. Biden and European governments thrive to nevertheless reduce dependence on fossils, poorer countries have argued that their already lagging economies are struggling to meet energy needs without being able to rely on cheap sources like coal.America will “accelerate the ability of developing countries to adapt to and manage the impacts of climate change by preparing knowledge, plans, programs, finance, and private capital for adaptation and resilience efforts,” a White House fact sheet announced on the eve of Mr. Biden’s trip to Egypt. Critics panned the proposed reliance on “private capital” as an ineffective new tax on corporations, which will trickle down to unreliable, possibly corrupt regimes in developing countries.At the same time, the COP schemes are yet to address another major issue: What to do about emissions deadbeats? Communist China emits almost a third of the world’s greenhouse gasses — more than the United States, Europe, and Japan combined. As these emissions increased by more than 5 percent last year, Beijing is rapidly opening up new coal mines, and its reliance on coal is not expected to decline anytime soon. Mr. Kerry was geared to discuss all this with counterparts from the Communist regime, but said Ms. Pelosi ruined his plans. “We were poised to deploy a major negotiating session around doing something for Sharm el-Sheikh, and that did get interrupted by the trip to Taiwan,” Mr. Kerry said today. Republicans who aim to revive America’s economy to better compete with Beijing can wonder: If the climate crisis is indeed global, why should America end relatively clean shale gas production while its main rival endlessly burns highly polluting coal? Encouraged by yesterday’s results Mr. Biden will likely ignore them and spend time high-fiving the COP 27 summiteers instead.

Expect a Biden Victory Lap Starting at Egypt Climate Summit

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