Jobs are make-or-break argument for Biden in climate plan

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is bringing out the billionaires, the CEOs and the union executives Friday to help sell President Joe Biden's climate-friendly transformation of the U.S. economy at a virtual summit of world leaders.

The closing day of the two-day summit on climate change is to feature Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg, steelworker and electrical union leaders and executives for solar and other renewable energy.

It's all in service of an argument U.S. officials say will make or break Biden's climate agenda: Pouring trillions of dollars into clean-energy technology, research and infrastructure will jet-pack a competitive U.S. economy into the future and create jobs, while saving the planet.

“Climate change is more than a threat,” Biden declared on Thursday's opening day of his climate summit. “It also presents one of the largest job creation opportunities in history.”

The new urgency comes as scientists say that climate change caused by coal plants, car engines and other fossil fuel use is worsening droughts, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters and that humans are running out of time to stave off catastrophic extremes of global warming.

The event has featured the world's major powers — and major polluters — pledging to cooperate on cutting petroleum and coal emissions that are rapidly warming the planet.

But Republicans are sticking to the arguments that former President Donald Trump made in pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate accord. They point to China as the world's worst climate polluter — the U.S. is No. 2 — and say any transition to clean energy hurts American oil, natural gas and coal workers.

It means “putting good-paying American jobs into the shredder,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,...