Four hundred and fifty U.S. diplomatic officials and employees attended two U.N. climate conferences but nobody in the State Department knows how much greenhouse gases were emitted as a result despite President Joe Biden’s 2021 Executive Order directing the federal government to measure its emissions, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The U.S. delegation to the 26th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12, 2021, included 191 federal executive branch officials and employees, while the 27th edition of the same gathering (COP27) met in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, from Nov. 6 to Nov. 20, 2022, with 259 U.S. officials in attendance.
State Department officials told GAO the meetings merited sending such large U.S. delegations because of the importance of dealing with climate change issues and the difficulties of negotiating in a virtual setting.
“State Department officials told us that there is no substitute for attending COP meetings in person, because negotiations are complex and typically run all day and night for a number of days. Specifically, they said that informal side discussions are an essential mode of reaching agreement, and that such interactions would be almost impossible to replicate in a virtual setting,” the GAO report stated.
“State officials also stated that meetings of annual Conference of the Parties are considered to be important gatherings for the numerous organizations that have a strong stake in the outcomes of the deliberations, and they attract thousands of academic experts, civil society leaders, nongovernmental organization advocates, business and labor leaders, and government officials,” the report added.
“They said that it is implausible that the U.S. would not send a strong negotiating team to these meetings in order to ensure that outcomes are consistent with U.S. policy and to maintain U.S. leadership and influence in the face of challenges from other countries on such a consequential issue.”
In a footnote, the GAO report said State Department officials also claimed that “the world was headed for well over 2°C of warming by the end of the century, missing the goals of the Paris Agreement and posing significantly worse climate risks. They said that, based on the outcomes and pledges that emerged from COP26 in Glasgow, the International Energy Agency (IEA) calculated that fulfillment of these commitments would be enough to hold the rise in global temperatures to 1.8°C by the end of the century.”
There is no data on how much greenhouse gases were emitted in the process of sending, supporting, and returning the U.S. delegations because, the GAO said it was told, State Department officials have no “systematic way to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. delegation travel to COP26, COP27, or any past meetings of the Conference of Parties.”
The State Department also told GAO that they are “developing methods to estimate future travel emissions,” but they also claimed there is no data “to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from the full delegation travel to COP meetings because each participant makes their own travel arrangements using the travel management systems of their agency. Further, they said that the White House has information about which officials traveled on Air Force One, but State does not have access to that information.”
Biden’s Executive Order directing the State Department and all other departments and agencies to begin measuring greenhouse gases resulting from their operation was issued on Dec. 08, 2021, with an implementation plan following in August 2022.
The only recommendation from GAO was that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken “ensure that the State Department consistently estimates greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. delegation travel to meetings of the UN Conferences of the Parties to align” with the executive order.
The GAO report was requested by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WVa.).
“The gas is always greener when you’re burning fossil fuels in the name of saving the planet,” Ernst said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times. “While giving lip service to greenies, Biden bureaucrats are blatantly emitting the greenhouse gases they demonize. The double standard is clear, and Americans have had enough of this hot air. It’s time for Biden bureaucrats to face the facts: According to their own actions, American-made fossil fuels are not the enemy. I am committed to exposing this hypocrisy.”
Cotton said in the same statement that “Joe Biden and his officials say they are addressing an ‘existential’ crisis by participating in climate conferences, all while traveling on private jets to and from the conferences. The Biden administration should instead focus its efforts on American energy production—or at the very least, let American taxpayers know about the private travel they are paying for.”
Capito said in the statement that “Americans are tired of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. who don’t practice what they preach when it comes to protecting the environment. In the Biden administration, the same people who are closing down power plants across the country and forcing Americans to buy electric vehicles are also the ones flying to climate conferences and using fossil fuels without apology.”
Ernst also said she is giving her latest “Squeal Award”, which calls out what she describes as wasteful government spending, to Biden’s Climate Envoy John Kerry, the former Secretary of State and former Massachusetts senator, because Kerry also attended “the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, stating ‘it was truly extraordinary’ to be part of a ‘select group of human beings … able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.’ In April, Kerry was off to Japan to attend the G7 Ministers’ Meeting on Climate, Energy, and Environment.”
The Iowa senator also flagged that she’s introducing legislation—the Executive Branch Emissions Transparency Act—to require “a continuing calculation of the fossil fuels emitted by the travels of the climate czar, the president, and the rest of the Biden administration.”
