Australia risks becoming an isolated laggard in addressing the climate crisis, without obvious allies to shelter it from rising international pressure to act, as the US takes a leadership role under Joe Biden, experts say.

The president-elect has declared addressing climate change “the No 1 issue facing humanity” and promised $2tn in climate spending and policies to put the US on a path to 100% clean electricity by 2035 and net zero emissions no later than 2050.

Biden last week promised to rejoin the Paris agreement (which due to a quirk of timing the US officially left on the day after the election) on his first day in office and has said he would “use every tool of American foreign policy to push the rest of the world” to increase their ambition to combat the problem.

With the Democrats in the White House, every member of the G7 and the European Union will be committed to net zero emissions by 2050. China – comfortably the world’s biggest annual emitter – says it will be carbon neutral before 2060. The Morrison government has resisted setting a specific long-term emissions goal, saying it would reach net zero “in the second half of the century”.

Read the full article on the Guardian website, featuring commentary by Prof Howard Bamsey and Prof Frank Jotzo