A top US climate official on Thursday played down the weakening of commitments to reduce coal usage at the recent COP26 conference, stressing that the fossil fuel’s inclusion in the summit’s resulting document was a victory in itself.
Jonathan Pershing, the US administration’s deputy special climate envoy, also said that too much had been made of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s absence from the conference, in contrast with US President Joe Biden’s assertion that the no-show signalled that Beijing had “walked away” from the climate issue.
