Consider it President Joe Biden s climate debutante ball.

The White House will convene a two-day summit this Thursday and Friday in which it will unveil its new emissions-cutting goal to world leaders, in a bid to restore Americas reputation in the polite society of global carbon negotiations.

The virtual conference will feature 40 heads of state, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It is the first major climate gathering since the U.S. rejoined the Paris climate accords, the global carbon-slashing pact former President Donald Trump exited.

The U.S. is back in the game, Gina McCarthy, Bidens domestic climate policy czar, told NPR this week. Theyre not wrong that we have lost some time. But frankly, the U.S. is looking at this as a tremendous opportunity to shift to clean energy. And we would hope that China and our other countries would look at it similarly.