The speech at the international climate summit, called COP26, will put the threat of climate change into a broader context, Obama spokeswoman Hannah Hankins said in a previous statement. The former President, she said, will specifically “lay out the important progress made in the five years since the Paris agreement took effect, highlight the leadership of young people around the globe, and urge more robust action going forward by all of us – governments, the private sector, philanthropy, and civil society.”
Obama’s presence at the COP26 began with suggestions from climate activists. But it really took shape in conversation with John Kerry, his former secretary of state and President Joe Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate, people familiar with the conversations told CNN.
The White House was eager for the help, officials said, requesting anonymity to discuss the behind-the-scenes conversations.
Obama had championed addressing environmental issues while in office, but former President Donald Trump — a longtime climate crisis denier — attempted to remove many of the policy guardrails installed by the Obama administration to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases. Since taking office, Biden has been reversing many of these actions by the Trump administration and has made ambitious pledges to tackle the climate crisis.
Notably, the climate summit is taking place five years after the Paris agreement took effect. In 2015, after the COP21, more than 190 countries signed onto the agreement at the time to limit the increase in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but preferably to 1.5 degrees.
Biden reentered the Paris agreement after former Trump pulled the United States out of it, and apologized to his fellow world leaders in remarks on the first day of COP26.
“I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States — the last administration — pulled out of the Paris Accords and put us sort of behind the 8 ball,” the President said last week in Glasgow.
