Pres. Biden to COP26 Summit: Addressing climate change is a "moral imperative, but also an economic imperative."

Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita reports live from the COP26 Summit in Glasgow where world leaders are deciding how to move forward on climate change.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Akiko, what's the latest?

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, hi, there to you, Brian. Well, I can tell you that the Biden administration has certainly arrived here with a very big presence. We've got 10 cabinet secretaries and heads of agencies, as well as dozens of members of Congress all traveling to Glasgow, to not just show that the US is serious about climate change, but ready to lead on climate action globally.

The president spoke to the World Leaders Summit earlier today, where he apologized for the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. He told this group of roughly 20,000 delegates the world is at an inflection point, but countries still have time to invest in an equitable clean energy future.

JOE BIDEN: This is a moral imperative, but it's also an economic imperative. If we fuel greater growth, new jobs, better opportunities for all our people, and as we see current volatility in energy prices rather than cast it as a reason to back off our clean energy goals, we must view it as a call to action.

AKIKO FUJITA: Now the focus of this summit is for individual countries to lay out their plans on how they plan to be aligned with the Paris Agreement. That agreement, of course, coming out six years ago, called for global warming to be capped at 2 degrees Celsius, but aimed to stay at 1 and 1/2 degrees. And all the science simply points to the fact that anything beyond that would be catastrophic.

Now, the absence of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, which is, of course, China, is going to be-- make this a lot more challenging. President Xi Jinping not traveling here to Glasgow. He's simply releasing a written statement at the World Leader Summit. And we should point out, there's plenty of headwinds coming into COP26, largely because of what developed over in Rome at the G20 summit.

The leaders there agreed to pursue efforts to try and cap global warming at 1 and 1/2 degrees, but they failed to reach an agreement to phase out domestic coal production, largely because of opposition from countries like China, as well as India. So over the next two weeks, we've got more than 100 countries, 20,000 delegates, all gathering here to try and lay out a climate action plan. But the hurdles are certainly going to be pretty significant.

BRIAN SOZZI: And Akiko, in addition to countries being there, we have a lot of US big-- big US companies in attendance-- General Motors, Bank of America, Amazon, Microsoft. What might they be up to there?

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, not just US companies, multinational companies all coming in here. I've been told this is by far the largest present the private sector has had at a COP meeting. And it really is about opportunity. There's a number that a lot of officials here on the ground like to quote. $23 trillion is the business opportunity on the table as so many different countries, especially developing countries, transition to this clean energy future. They see a big business opportunity, and certainly, a lot of meetings that are happening, not just within the event center here, but outside as private and public sectors try to work together to tackle this crisis.

KARINA MITCHELL: Akiko, this is Karina. You know, it's really funny to me that world leaders have all gathered there to make consequential decisions on climate and the future. But yet, they're all clamoring for more oil, right, at the same time. How high is a risk of failure? What do these leaders need to deliver at these meetings to get actionable change?

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, you hit on a very key point there, Karina, which is really a very tricky line that a lot of these leaders are going to have to tow over the next two weeks at a time when there is a significant energy crunch globally, but especially here in the UK. And you heard Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm being asked about that over the weekend, saying the Biden administration, yes, is pressuring OPEC to basically turn on the path a little more, but that runs directly counter to this message about pulling back on oil.

The administration has said this is kind of a short-term fix. And Gina McCarthy, the climate advisor, told me ahead of COP26, that she sees this as a sign that that transition to cleaner energy needs to be accelerated. But you're certainly right. That is a huge cloud that's hanging over this conference, especially with so many of these leaders facing pressure back home, with those utility prices going up this winter.