G20 countries, the world's biggest polluters

US President Joe Biden plans to heavily regulate methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Leaders at the Glasgow climate conference also announced a pact by over 100 countries to end deforestation by 2030.

John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy on climate change, said he expected new financial commitments to fulfill a long-delayed promise to provide $100 billion a year in aid for developing countries to fight and adapt to global warming.

The latest diplomatic effort, led by Germany and Canada, aims to pull together that amount from wealthier donor countries by 2023 — three years behind the timetable set in 2015 under the Paris Agreement.

In a statement, the High Ambition Coalition rang the alarm that the world was far off track from the goal of limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of this century.

The group stressed the urgent need to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in this decisive decade, and recognize the importance of ambitious action” by the 20 nations with the world’s biggest economies, known as the Group of 20, which are also the world’s 20 biggest polluters.

At the moment, even if all countries achieve their voluntarily set climate plans, the average global temperature would go far past a 1.5-degree increase, raising the prospect of much more frequent and intense heat waves, fires and floods.