Vice President Kamala Harris is attending the COP28 conference in place of President Joe Biden, according to CNN. COP28, which is being held in Dubai from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, is an international conference where United Nations member states come together to discuss possible ways to address climate change. According to the COP28 website, the conference is “the world’s only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change” where “more than 70,000 delegates are expected to attend” from around the world.
The ongoing Israel-Hamas war was the primary reason why Biden chose not to attend the conference, according to a report by the New York Times. The same source indicated that the war in Ukraine was also a contributing factor as to why the president has chosen not to attend.
Biden’s schedule on Nov. 30, the first day of the summit, included a “bilateral meeting with President Jao Manuel Goncalves of the Republic of Angola and attending the National Tree Lighting,” according to the Associated Press.
COP conferences have occurred every year for the past 28 years. Biden was the first president to regularly go to COP conferences, according to Agence France-Presse, and attended in 2021 and 2022.
Past conferences have resulted in the creation of international climate action plans like the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Climate Accords — also known as the Paris Agreement. The specific issues that will be explored at this year’s conference will include “limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, helping vulnerable communities adapt to the effects of climate change, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050,” according to the COP28 organizers.
The annual COP conference “is the one forum that we have for nations to get together and try to hammer out deals [about climate change],” said Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Sustainability Matthew Betherum. Biden’s lack of attendance “sends a signal that [climate change] is not something we’re prioritizing right now,” according to Betherum, and “tells the international community something about the U.S.’ potential commitment to actually follow through on our Paris Agreement pledges.”
The United States re-entered the Paris Agreement after Biden assumed the office of the presidency in 2021. Progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement is likely to be a prominent topic of discussion during the conference, according to Betherum. He said that although the agreements made at COP conferences are technically not enforceable, the perceptions created by Biden’s lack of attendance are consequential “to the extent that the international community starts to pull back their own efforts because they start to say, ‘Well if the U.S. isn’t going to do more, why should we pony up more?’ that then has a real impact.”
Not everyone agrees that Biden’s lack of attendance could negatively affect efforts to combat climate change; some feel that the president’s choice to attend the conference or not would not matter much either way.
“He’s attended previous summits, he’s sending the vice president, he’s sending [Senior Advisor for clean energy and innovation and implementation] John Podesta, he’s sending [Special Presidential Envoy for the Climate] John Kerry, so I don’t read it as a big deal,” said Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department Brian Harward.
The president’s attendance at the conference would be entirely “symbolic” in Harward’s opinion.
Biden’s absence “isn’t going to make that big of a difference in terms of the work that gets done at the summit. That work is going to be done by the staff of Podesta and Kerry and others. That work would happen anyway,” Harward said.
Many observers found it surprising that Biden chose not to attend given his administration’s passage of some of the most ambitious climate change legislation ever passed. His presidential campaign has also focused a great deal on the administration’s efforts to combat climate change in their messaging, and Biden has made strong statements about the issue in his speeches. The president had referred to climate change as “‘the ultimate threat to humanity’” according to the Associated Press.
However, Harward believes that the president’s climate change record may have contributed to his decision to skip the conference.
“He has a legislative track record of advocating for success in climate policy, including the Inflation Reduction Act,” Harward said. “Given everything that’s happening in the world … the attention given to [the COP28 conference] may not outweigh the other kinds of things that he needs to attend to.”
Climate activists like Betherum are more cynical.
“We’re not doing enough,” Betherum said. “Whether Biden goes there or whether he doesn’t go there, the United States is not doing enough on this issue. We have perfect capability to do more than we’re doing right now.”