Earth Day Summit

April 23, 2021

On March 22, 2021, US President Joe Biden kick started a two-day Earth Day Summit. During the Summit, the President pledged to halve the US emissions by the end of the decade.

Key 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.

Background

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.

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