Former US President Barack Obama will make comments this Monday (8) at the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow, in a return to the world stage centered around the climate crisis.
The speech at the international climate summit will put the threat of climate change in a broader context, Obama spokeswoman Hannah Hankins said in a statement.
The former president will “exhibit the important progress made in the five years since the Paris agreement came into force, highlighting the leadership of young people around the world and calling for stronger action by all of us – governments, the industry private sector, philanthropy and civil society”.
Obama’s presence at COP26 was suggested by climate activists. And that took shape in conversations with John Kerry, his former secretary of state and President Joe Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate, sources told CNN. The White House was eager for help, officials said.
The former president defended addressing environmental issues while in office, but Donald Trump – a denier of the climate crisis – tried to remove many of the political actions taken by the Obama administration to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Since taking office, Biden has reversed many of these decisions by the Trump administration and made ambitious promises to tackle the climate crisis.
The climate summit is taking place five years after the Paris agreement entered into force. In 2015, after COP21, more than 190 countries signed the agreement at the time to limit the rise in global temperatures to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, preferably to 1.5°C.
Biden re-entered the Paris agreement after the former Trump pulled the United States out of it and apologized to fellow world leaders in comments on the first day of COP26.
“I don’t think I should apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States – the last government – withdrew from the Paris Agreement,” the president said last week in Glasgow.
Reference: CNN Brasil
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