"Disappointing" - US President Biden criticises China and Russia

WORLD "Disappointing" - US President Biden criticises China and Russia 2 hrs ago | US President Joe Biden has blamed China and Russia for the disappointment of many climate activists with the decisions of the G-20 summit. The disappointment had to do with the fact that the two countries had not shown any willingness to make any commitments on climate protection, Biden said on Sunday after the two-day summit in Rome. "There is a reason for people to be disappointed. I found it disappointing myself." The world climate conference begins in Glasgow, Scotland. 120 heads of state and government are negotiating climate protection. The talks are accompanied by protests by climate change activists in the city. Earlier, the G-20 in Rome reached a compromise on climate neutrality. The talks are accompanied by protests by climate protection activists in the city. Nevertheless, the group of leading economic powers had made "clear progress" with a view to the climate conference in Glasgow. More needs to be done, however. But it was particularly important to look at "what China is not doing, what Russia is not doing and what Saudi Arabia is not doing". The leading economic powers were unable to agree on ambitious common climate targets at their G-20 summit in Rome, Italy, on Sunday. The final declaration contains no concrete target date for either the important carbon neutrality or the phase-out of coal-fired power generation. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping did not travel to the summit in Rome, but were only connected via video. At the summit, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defended his country's goal of becoming CO2 neutral only by 2060. "This is our calculated commitment and we are sticking to it." Continuing, he said, "No one has proven to us or anyone else that 2050 is anything that everyone has to sign up to." Merkel sees climate resolutions as a success German Chancellor Angela Merkel saw the decisions on climate protection as a "good signal". She emphasised that the 19 leading economic powers and the European Union had, for the first time since 2016, jointly committed to the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. Afterwards, US President Donald Trump had pulled out of the climate agreement. His successor Biden, who attended a regular G-20 summit in Rome for the first time, reversed this step as one of his first official acts. Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi defended the results. "This summit was a success," the 74-year-old said at the closing press conference. He highlighted the G20's commitment to the 2015 target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees if possible. He also said that an important goal had been achieved with the pledge to end the financing of coal for electricity generation. France's President Emmanuel Macron also gave a positive assessment. He saw the high-level meeting as a "success" in which results had been delivered. This applies above all to the controversial issues surrounding climate change. The summit in Rome had offered the chance to "revive rapprochement" among the world's largest economies before the much larger UN climate conference in Glasgow, Macron said. Climate activists, on the other hand, were disappointed with the outcome of the summit of the 20 most important industrialised and emerging countries. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who travelled on from the G20 to the climate summit in Glasgow on Sunday, tweeted: "I leave Rome with unfulfilled hopes - but at least they are not buried". The G20 group is responsible for 80 per cent of the world's emissions. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was also sceptical. There has been progress. But the pledges of the heads of state and government to curb climate change are only "drops in a rapidly warming ocean", Johnson said. He also referred to the historic Paris climate agreement of 2015. Six years later, the pledges made then are beginning to sound "frankly hollow", Johnson said. "If we don't act now, the Paris Agreement will be seen in the future not as the moment humanity opened its eyes to the problem, but as the moment we backed down and turned away."