Obama hits Russia, China for "absence of urgency" on climate

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Barack Obama is expressing confidence at U.N. climate talks Monday that the Biden administration will ultimately get its $555 billion climate package through Congress, and faulting U.S. rivals China and Russia for what he calls a “dangerous absence of urgency” in cutting their own climate-wrecking emissions.

The U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, is the former American president's first since he helped deliver the triumph of the 2015 Paris climate accord, when nations committed to cutting fossil fuel and agricultural emissions fast enough to keep the Earth's warming below catastrophic levels.

Climate summits since then have been less conclusive, especially as the U.S. under President Donald Trump dropped out of the Paris accord. President Joe Biden has since rejoined.

Obama's appearance on the sidelines of the talks is meant to remind governments of the elation that surrounded the striking of the Paris accord, and urge them to more immediate, concrete steps to put the 2015 deal into action.

In prepared remarks obtained by The Associated Press ahead of a speech to activists, Obama noted efforts by the United States — the world's second-worst climate polluter now after China — stalled when Trump pulled out of the climate accord.

“I wasn’t real happy about that,” he admitted.

Despite opposition within Biden's own Democratic party that has blocked the climate-fighting legislation, Obama said he was confident that some version of Biden's ambitious climate bill will pass in Congress in the weeks to come.

“It will set the United States on course to meet its new climate targets,” he said.

And while in 2015, rapport between Obama administration negotiators and their Chinese counterparts was seen as paving the way to the global Paris accord,...