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April 22nd was Earth Day and that was when the White House kicked off a virtual Climate Summit, an online meeting of dozens of world leaders. U.S. President Joe Biden promised that America would dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. These include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Most climate scientists blame these gases for polluting the atmosphere and negatively impacting the global climate. By the year 2030, President Biden wants to cut America's emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 50 percent over what they were in 2005.
That's one of the most ambitious pledges in the world but there are no penalties if the U.S. doesn't meet that commitment and the Biden Administration did not give details on how American would meet it. The U.S. hopes that having a high target in reducing greenhouse gas emissions will give it leverage in convincing other countries to do the same thing. The president said that no single nation can confront climate related issues on its own and he called on the other leaders in the summit, who included Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, to take action in their own countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But while the U.S. leader says doing this offers an extraordinary opportunity to create jobs in the green energy sector, critics say the president's policies have caused thousands of job losses in the oil, gas and coal industries. Former President Donald Trump rolled back U.S. government regulations concerning greenhouse gas emissions. His predecessor, Former President Barack Obama had instituted new regulations.
So American policies on this can change from president to president. The virtual Climate Summit runs through Friday.
