The US President Joe Biden said on Sunday at a press conference in Rome that neither the US nor other countries can stop using oil overnight to fight climate change. Also, he urged Russia and other oil producing countries (OPEC) to boost their oil production before heading to the U.N. climate summit (COP26) at Glasgow after talking to the G20, leaders of the world’s 20 major economies. (https://www.npr.org/2021/10/31/1050958992/biden-says-he-worries-that-cutting-oil-production-too-fast-will-hurt-working-peo)

In a sharp contrast, while addressing a chamber at the climate summit later, he warned that the climate crisis poses “the existential threat to human existence as we know it” and urged other world leaders to embark upon a transformational shift to clean energy.

He’d admitted that “on the surface, it seems like an irony”, but he believed that an overnight shift to renewable energy was “just not rational”. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/01/biden-cop26-speech-climate-change-action-us-lead-example).

The US President’s contradictory comments brought to the fore many such incongruities as politicians struggle against political and economic realities while grappling with disastrous climate change. This is the reason why most climate summits end with tall promises, but there are few concrete actions at the ground level.

Despite their pledges at the summit, the US and most other nations keep on exporting huge amounts of fossil fuels. Biden, in fact, urged oil producing countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia to boost their oil production and supply other nations at a cheaper price. He worries that cutting oil production abruptly might hurt working people in the US who may not be able to afford costly fuel/gas for their cars. The Biden administration has also authorized 2,500 new oil and gas permits in just six months in the US, a figure the Trump administration reached in a year.

These moves, believe energy experts and climate activists, may not help the US President meet his ambitious goal of halving the nation’s emission, compared to 2005 levels, by the end of this decade.

READ MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/climate/biden-oil-gas-cop26.html