US President Joe Biden has arrived in Europe ahead of the climate summit, with his signature climate policy yet to pass through the US Congress.
Biden first arrived in Rome for the October 30-31 G-20 summit. World leaders will discuss the pandemic, climate change and issues that move the global economy.
He’ll continue to the COP26, the two-day United Nations conference on climate in Glasgow, Scotland, which starts November 1.
But first, he will meet Pope Francis, head of the powerful Catholic Church, of which Biden himself is a loyal parishioner.
Pope Francis has earlier urged world leaders to take “radical decisions” at next week’s global environmental summit.
The Pope talked of crises including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and economic difficulties, and urged the world to respond to them with vision and radical decisions, so as not to “waste opportunities” that the current challenges present.
“We can confront these crises by retreating into isolationism, protectionism and exploitation. Or we can see in them a real chance for change, he further said.
Earlier, an UN-appointed panel of experts said that the earth is getting so hot
that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past the most ambitious threshold
set in the Paris accord.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the report as a “code red” for humanity.
He stressed that it “must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy the planet.”
