- World leaders are meeting for COP26.
This is the 26th time that they've met in a climate summit.
- It's called a conference of parties
because it's a group of not only nations but also organizations.
- It's a global summit
under the administration of the United Nations.
This one is hosted by the UK, by Boris Johnson.
It will happen in Glasgow, Scotland.
- The conference begins in the beginning of November
and it goes for about two weeks.
- And the politics of it, well, the politics are a mess.
- For President Biden, this will be his first COP
to go to as President.
- He's walking into a pretty febrile atmosphere.
- When he was on the campaign trail,
he campaigned as a climate president.
He had a really sort of to some activists,
quite surprisingly bold agenda focused on reducing emissions.
And he's coming in
after the very tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump.
- President Trump as you recall,
pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement.
- The United States will withdraw.
- A commitment done back in 2015.
- From the Paris Climate Accord.
- President Biden campaigned
and has postured himself as sort of the polar opposite,
as a leader who wants to, not only reengage
the United States in these climate agreements.
- We're going to get back into the Paris Agreement,
back into the business of leading the world.
- But also take on a leadership role on the global stage
to where the United States is setting the agenda on climate
and trying to rally other countries around it.
And so, to take on that role, you know,
one typically does need to show
that they've done quite a lot themselves.
And so, that's sort of where Biden is right now.
He's going to this conference and really hoping to go in
with his agenda in place.
- Biden has got -- been dealt a tough hand
because, you know, a month or so back
with the majorities in the Senate and the House
and this trillions of dollars in spending on infrastructure,
that had a big part of that money was climate marked.
- Biden's climate agenda is broken up
into two major pieces of legislation.
One is a bipartisan infrastructure bill,
but another large chunk of it is in what's referenced
to as the Build Back Better agenda
or the Reconciliation Bill.
It's much larger than what President Obama promised.
It is, in fact, the boldest climate agenda
that any president has ever enacted.
- He could've had a really big thing to display, right,
so the US is going to spend this enormous amount of money
on energy transition
and all these clever things to reduce our emissions
and to sequester carbon and farms and help animals
and these other things.
But he doesn't have that yet.
You know, he's got, like a lot of world leaders,
a lot of promises.
- I'm telling you, we're going to get this done.
- Of course, you know, one of the perks
of the urging of democracy that the United States uses
is that while both chambers of Congress
are controlled by democrats, the other chamber of the Senate
is controlled by the narrowest possible margin
and one of the senators, who's a democrat,
who's been one of the key negotiators
in this piece of legislation is Joe Manchin.
- I've never been a liberal in any way, shape or the form.
- And he is from West Virginia, which is a coal-mining state.
I mean, coal is -- coal is king in West Virginia
and is very much part of the negotiations
in Biden's Build Back Better agenda
is what exactly will Joe Manchin support
when it comes to climate?
- The US and Britain and the Europeans are having big asks.
Countries like India and China,
even Russia to some degree, lots of developing countries,
they look at the US and the G20 and say,
well, that's nice of you to make a lot of promises,
but what are you actually really doing?
And it's nice of you to make a lot of promises,
but, you know, you caused most of this problem.
- When Biden goes to Glasgow,
he'll be there, we believe, for the first few days
when most of the world leaders are going to be there.
They'll be giving opening statements.
One of the big tension points is China
because the Chinese leader, Xi, is not planning on attending.
- But they have to get big polluters,
China, India, Brazil, etc.
, to commit to very ambitious goals, which they have not yet.
So you want a strong hand
because they'll call baloney to you, right?