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23 April 2021.
Introduction:
On March 22, 2021, US President Joe Biden at the onset of a two-day Earth Day Summit, pledged to halve the US emissions by the end of the decade.
Highlights
- The United States and the other countries increased their targets of slashing the Greenhouse gas emissions.
- The US President Joe Biden unveiled a 2 trillion USD infrastructure package. The package included several elements of climate friendly policies, investment in electric grid, development funds for clean energy.
- During the summit, around 101 Nobel Laureates made a call to sign up a “Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty”. They submitted a letter that called to phase out fossil fuels. The Buddhist leader Dalai Lama was one of the signatories of the letter.
- Also, other leaders announced their commitments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions during the summit.
Current Scenario
- The US has the highest amount of public money committed to the fossil fuels in COVID-19 recovery packages.
- The per capita fossil fuel consumption of USA was 66,525-megawatt hour and for India, it was 6,303 megawatt hour.
- The fossil fuel sector in the US gets 20 billion USD of direct subsidies. Of this 20% is allocated to coal and 80% to crude oil and natural gas.
Postion so far:
The Production Gap report of United Nations Environment Programme that was published in 2020 said that the countries should decrease fossil fuel production roughly by 6% a year between 2020 and 2030 to follow the 1.5 degrees consistent pathway. That is, to keep the increase in global temperature within 1.5 degrees Celsius as compare to pre-industrial era.