U.S. President Joe Biden offered a public apology to a U.N. climate conference over his predecessor Donald Trump’s move to pull the U.S. from the Paris accord.
In a marked change of tone for U.S. leaders, Biden acknowledged at a U.N. summit Monday that the United States and other developed nations bore much of the responsibility for climate change, and said actions taken this decade to contain global warming will be decisive in preventing future generations from suffering.
Standing before world leaders gathered in Scotland, Biden sought to portray the enormous costs of limiting carbon emissions as a chance to create jobs by transitioning to renewable energy and electric automobiles.
Yet he also apologized for former President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement and the role the U.S. and other wealthy countries played in contributing to climate change.
For Trump’s action, he said: “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.”
“Those of us who are responsible for much of the deforestation and all of the problems we have so far,” Biden said, have “overwhelming obligations” to the poorer nations that account for few of the emissions yet are paying a price as the planet has grown hotter.
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.
