The deletion of a clean electricity program from a massive budget bill now being negotiated on Capitol Hill weakened the hand of Mr. Biden, who is set to arrive in Glasgow on Nov. 1 for a pivotal U.N. summit where he had hoped to re-establish American leadership on the fight against climate change.
Speaking at a CNN Town Hall on Thursday night, Mr. Biden pledged that when he arrives in Scotland, “I’m presenting a commitment to the world that we will in fact get to net zero emissions on electric power by 2035 and net zero emissions across the board by 2050 or before, but we have to do so much, between now and 2030, to demonstrate what we’re going to do to get there.”
Accompanying the president to Scotland, in addition to a significant portion of his Cabinet, will be Mr. Biden’s own top climate change advisers, John Kerry and Gina McCarthy, both veterans of the Obama administration. During that administration, Mr. Kerry and Ms. McCarthy traveled to multiple international climate negotiations, where Mr. Kerry promised that the United States. would pass a tough new climate law, which it never did, and Ms. McCarthy detailed tough new pollution rules governing smokestacks and power plants, which were enacted but then rolled back by the Trump administration.
Mr. Biden is likely to present his Plan B to a skeptical audience in Glasgow.
“Biden has been forceful with what he says on climate change,” said Laurence Tubiana, France’s former climate change ambassador who is now the chief executive of the European Climate Foundation. “But credibility is a problem. There will still be a question mark — how can he deliver?”