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President Biden hosts Climate Summit

Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss President Biden’s aim to cut carbon emissions by as much as 52% by 2030 at virtual climate summit.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: We begin this hour, though, with that two-day virtual climate summit at the White House. The president pledging to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next decade. He made this pledge in front of more than 40 world leaders. Yahoo Finance's Jessica Smith is following the developments for us from Washington. And Jess, this was really a symbolic message more than anything, the president trying to show that the US is back in the game, willing to lead on this conversation now.

JESSICA SMITH: Right, Akiko, that was one of the promises that President Biden made on the campaign trail to make the US a leader in the fight against climate change after President Trump left the Paris Climate Accord. And he rolled back so many environmental regulations. And the White House is using this summit to show that climate is once again a priority to set new targets for the US and to try and draw commitments from the rest of the world. Of course, as you mentioned, the White House did announce this morning that the US will aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% from 2005 levels by the year 2030. That's nearly double the commitment that President Obama made in the Paris Climate Accord in 2015.

Now this morning, the president said that the world must make decisions this decade to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. But he said the US cannot do it alone. Let's watch.

JOSEPH BIDEN: All of us, all of us, and particularly, those of us who represent the world's largest economies, we have to step up. You know, those that do take action and make bold investments in their people and clean energy future will win the good jobs of tomorrow and make their economies more resilient and more competitive. So let's run that race. Win more. Win more sustainable future than we have now, overcome the existential crisis of our time.

JESSICA SMITH: China's President Xi said that China would strictly limit increasing coal consumption. And he also repeated his pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Russian President Vladimir Putin also made some vague promises to reduce emissions. And then other countries like Japan, India, Canada, many others, have made commitments to ramp up their efforts to fight climate change.

Now, of course, Congress is going to have to play a role in enacting some of these policies that will be necessary if the US is going to meet its emissions reduction target. And that could be difficult. We already heard from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor today really bashing President Biden's climate plan, saying that it was going to kill American jobs. And of course, that is the issue that we have heard from many Republicans, as they criticized President Biden's infrastructure plan and all of the clean energy proposals that are included in it. Zack and Akiko.