Earth Day 2021: Climate activists dump manure on Biden White House as Greta hits out with Twitter bio

The US president is approaching 100 days in office after making a swift start to his tenure in the White House in which he has issued a flurry of executive orders, pushing major spending bills through Congress to fend off the coronavirus pandemic and stimulate the country’s economy.

He is now turning his attention to the environment, with his administration forced to pick up the pieces following the disastrous reign of Donald Trump, who considered the climate crisis “a hoax”, withdrew from the Paris accord, backed “beautiful clean coal” over the renewable energy sector and engaged in the hacking and slashing of regulations to permit drilling on once-protected public lands.

Here’s a look at President Biden’s record on the environment so far as he approaches a century of days in the top job.

Hundreds of companies are urging President Biden to cut the US’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels.

Major corporations including Apple, General Electric, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Microsoft, National Grid, Starbucks, Unilever and Verizon all made their feelings known in a recent open letter, a rare ethical flex from powerhouse brands.

The signatories together represent more than $3 trillion in annual revenue and employ nearly 6 million American workers.

“To restore the standing of the US as a global leader, we need to address the climate crisis at the pace and scale it demands,” the letter read.

“Millions of Americans are already feeling the impacts of climate change. From recent extreme weather to deadly wildfires and record-breaking hurricanes, the human and economic losses of the past 12 months alone are profound. Tragically, these devastating climate impacts also disproportionately hit marginalized and low-income communities who are least able to withstand them. We must act now to slow and turn the tide.”

Louise Boyle has more.

Here’s a little Earth Day treat from Indy TV, which is running a livefeed from a tree top in darkest Latvia where Milda the eagle is preparing to hatch out her latest brood.

Some interesting research here from the University of Exeter and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology suggesting that maybe, just maybe, catastrophic point-of-no-return disasters like the melting of the polar ice caps or the devastation of the Amazon rainforest might be so gradual as to give us more time to prevent them (should we choose to, that is).

The celebrated Swedish activist has issued “an emergency alert for the general public”, a new video piling pressure on the White House summit and deriding the participants’ inevitable claims that their emissions reductions goals are “ambitious”.

We should not be satisfied with weak targets on the basis that they are “better than nothing”, she says, calling for a “no surrender” attitude and once more attacking the idea that any idealism is “naive”.

Incidentally, her three-part documentary series A Year to Change the World is on the BBC iPlayer right now and premieres on PBS in the US tonight.

It is well worth your time.

Here’s Harry Cockburn’s story.

The Biden administration has just announced a pledge to slash US greenhouse gas emissions by 50%-52% from 2005 levels by 2030, a new target it hopes will spur other big emitter countries to raise their ambition to combat climate change.

The goal, unveiled at the start of a two-day climate summit hosted by President Biden, comes as the United States seeks to reclaim global leadership in the fight against global warming after his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew the country from international efforts to cut emissions.

It also marks an important milestone in Biden’s broader plan to decarbonise the American economy entirely by 2050 - an agenda he says can create millions of good-paying jobs but which many Republicans say they fear will damage the economy.

The emissions cuts are expected to come from power plants, cars and other sectors across the economy, but the White House did not set individual targets for those industries.

“It’s an economy-wide goal. There are going to be multiple pathways to get there,” one official told reporters on a conference call describing the plan.

Sector-specific goals will be laid out later this year.

How the United States intends to reach its climate goals will be crucial to cementing US credibility on global warming, amid international concerns that America’s commitment to a clean energy economy can shift drastically from one administration to the next.

Biden’s recently introduced $2 trillion infrastructure plan contains numerous measures that could deliver some of the emissions cuts needed this decade, including a clean energy standard to achieve net zero emissions in the power sector by 2035 and moves to electrify the vehicle fleet.

But the measures need to be passed by Congress before becoming reality.

Gino Spocchia has this report.

In the UK, the PM is being urged to make international climate agreements legally binding amid warnings from scientists that Britain doesn't have a plan to meet its commitments.

Climate experts and scientists have drawn up draft legislation that could enshrine the Paris agreement in domestic law and commit the government to producing a plan to meet it.

But despite support from over 118 MPs and peers the government is denying the Commons parliamentary time to discuss the legislation.

Now a letter to the prime minister signed by over 100 climate experts and environmentalists seen by The Independent urges government support for the Climate & Ecological Emergency Bill.

It comes ahead of the spotlight turning dramatically on the UK's climate policy later this year as Britain hosts the G7 summit and the Cop26 meeting.

Jon Stone has more.

With Extinction Rebellion making waves this morning, here’s my colleague Harry Cockburn’s fascinating interview with the movement’s founder.

Our climate correspondent Daisy Dunne has the latest findings from the the International Energy Agency (IEA), which warns in its latest report that global CO2 emissions from energy use are set to soar by 1.5 billion tonnes in 2021 - the highest annual increase since the world turned heavily to fossil fuels after the financial crisis in 2010.

Driven by soaring demand, this uptick would also be the second-largest annual increase in CO2 emissions seen since the start of the industrial era, the IEA says.

Ahead of Biden’s landmark leaders summit today, senior climate correspondent Louise Boyle asks whether America can convince the world it’s back to fight the climate crisis for the long-haul