Insight
Joe Biden at the G20 and COP26 - will the president deliver or is it all for show?
It is the scenario President Joe Biden has fought for months to avoid - departing for one of his biggest moments on the world stage without what would arguably be the biggest achievement of his career.What could have been a lap of honour is now an exercise in spin and presentation.
How do you present yourself as a leader able to unite the world when you arrive as a leader who isn’t able to unite your own party?President Biden describes these days as an inflection point for the world. It is also an inflection point for the United States, his presidency and the credibility of the party he leads.
The internal strife in the quest to pass his vast domestic spending programme has denied him a winning vote in Congress. He claims to have secured a framework to pass the $1.75 trillion dollar (£1.27trn) deal, but a framework is far from the deal he hoped to pack in his bag for G20 and COP26.
The COP27 climate conference - what you need to know
What is COP27? When and where will it be?
What is COP27? When and where will it be?
Each year, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meets at what is called the Conference of the Parties (abbreviated as COP) to discuss the world's progress on climate change and how to tackle it.
COP27 is the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties summit which will be held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt from November 6-18.
Who is going?
Who is going?
Leaders of the 197 countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - a treaty that came into force in 1994 - are invited to the summit.
These are some of the world leaders that will be attending COP27:
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is attending the conference, after initially saying he wouldn't as he was too busy focusing on the economy within his first weeks in office.
US President Joe Biden and his experienced climate envoy, John Kerry, will appear at the talks.
France President Emmanuel Macron will also be among the heads of state from around the world staying in Egypt.
King Charles III will not be attending COP27, despite being a staunch advocate for the environment. The decision was made jointly by Buckingham Palace and former prime minister Liz Truss.
Elsewhere, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will not attend the talks just as they decided to do for COP26.
What is it hoping to achieve?
What is it hoping to achieve?
1. Ensure full implementation of the Paris Agreement and putting negotiations into concrete actions - included within this is the target of limiting global warming to well below 2C.
2. Cementing progress on the critical workstreams of mitigation, adaptation, finance and loss and damage, while stepping up finance notably to tackle the impacts of climate change.
3. Enhancing the delivery of the principles of transparency and accountability throughout the UN Climate Change process.
Within the Infrastructure Bill, there is $550 billion to tackle climate change.
A winning vote would have been his leverage to increase pressure on other nations.
Without it, he lays himself open to criticism that he is demanding of others, who don’t have the might of the USA, something that he cannot deliver himself.A man who has sold himself as great deal maker has lobbied and cajoled, but on Thursday night leaves the job of rallying the troops to others, mainly the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
She has warned Democrats not to embarrass the president on the world stage but her words and his have so far failed to yield results.
This is a president seeing his moral authority weakened in a most public way.
A worry for him and a worry for those allies who believed in Joe Biden and his hope to build back better at home and abroad.The man who claims that America is back as a leader of the world cannot even present himself as leader of his own.