President Joe Biden isn’t planning to attend the COP28 climate summit later this week in Dubai, according to people familiar with the situation.
Although no official announcement has been made, the US delegation preparing for the annual climate talks has been told not to expect the president at this year’s event, the people said, asking to not to be named because the information is private.
The global leaders’ summit that opens COP takes place on Friday and Saturday this week. Biden’s list of official engagements has him in the US until Thursday, when he’s expected to meet the the Angolan president in Washington. Presidential travel schedules can be changed at the last minute.
“Although we don’t have any travel updates to share for the President at this time, the Administration looks forward to a robust and productive COP28,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez said in a statement.
The New York Times first reported Biden’s plans not to travel, citing an unidentified White House official.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the UK’s Rishi Sunak and France’s President Emmanuel Macron are among world leaders expected in Dubai. China’s Xi Jinping won’t be there, meaning that as things stand the world’s two largest emitters will not be represented by their heads of state this year.
Biden, who took the US back into the Paris agreement on cutting emissions, attended the last two summits, making a very quick stop in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, last year and traveling to Glasgow, Scotland in 2021.
John Kerry, the president’s special envoy on climate change, will be in Dubai for the whole of the summit, which runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.
