Biden To Skip COP28 Climate Summit In Dubai, Says White House Official: Report

United States President Joe Biden will skip the United Nations' major climate summit, COP28, scheduled to begin in Dubai on Thursday, said reports citing an official of the White House. The official has said that Biden will not attend the two-week-long summit, without giving a reason for the same.

The COP28 Summit will have King Charles III, Pope Francis and leaders from nearly 200 countries in attendance, a New York Times report said. However, media reports suggest the war in the Middle East, Ukraine and the presidential campaign could be the reasons for the development.

According to The Guardian, Biden's schedule for Thursday released by the White House shows him hosting a bilateral meeting with his counterpart of the Republic of Angola and attending the National Tree Lighting.

"They’ve got the war in the Middle East and a war in Ukraine, a bunch of things going on," John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy for climate change, said last week, quoted NYTimes. Kirsten Allen, a spokeswoman for Vice President Kamala Harris, last week said that Harris also had no plans to attend the climate conference. Kerry and his team will be in Dubai to attend the COP28 Summit. 

Biden has been busy with hostage release in Gaza and on a permanent solution between Israel and Hamas as the conflict goes through a four-day temporary truce.

Notably, countries are planning to push for the world’s first deal to phase out Carbon dioxide-emitting coal, oil and gas at the Dubai huddle.

Biden has been an advocate of climate action and had called climate change "the ultimate threat to humanity" earlier this month.

The US president had attended the annual UN climate conference for the last two years. In 2021, he even apologised for the US briefly pulling out of a global climate agreement under Donald Trump's rule.

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