Biden Apologizes to World for Trump

President Biden offered a public apology to a UN climate conference over predecessor Donald Trump’s move to pull the US from the Paris accord. Biden was speaking in Glasgow, Scotland, on Monday where world leaders were gathering to discuss implementing the agreement to contain global warming by mid-century. “I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact the United States, the last administration, pulled out of the Paris Accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit," he said, per the AP. Biden has frequently criticized the past administration’s approach to climate, but had not previously delivered a public apology to the world. Biden reentered the agreement in one of his first official acts in office on Jan. 20. Also:

• The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, told world leaders that failing to act urgently on climate change will be a “death sentence” for people in island nations like hers.
• French President Emmanuel Macron challenged the world’s biggest emitters to immediately step up commitments to curb carbon emissions, saying doing so within the coming days is the only way to make global efforts to slow climate change “credible.”
• Brazil on Monday stepped up its commitment against greenhouse gas emissions, aiming to halve them by 2030 as compared to 2005 levels, while critics alleged the government is tinkering with data.
• Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel urged other countries to put a price on carbon emissions, which are the main cause of global warming. Merkel—who chaired the first Conference of the Parties, or COP1, in 1995 —said the world needs a “comprehensive transformation” of the way people live and work if it wants to curb climate change.
• British naturalist David Attenborough gave leaders a brief lesson in the fragility of the planet and humanity’s dependence on the natural world. The 95-year-old said for much of humanity’s existence, the climate on Earth had swung wildly before stabilizing 10,000 years ago, allowing human civilizations to flourish. “The stability we all depend on is breaking,” he said.

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