US President Joe Biden has criticised Russia and China for missing the crucial United States climate change conference, COP26.

He said that both the countries have ”walked away” from the ”gigantic issue” of global warming that is adversely affecting the entire world.

World leaders of over 120 nations have gathered in Glasgow to limit the rise in global temperature.

Calling the step a ”big mistake,” Biden asked in his address ”How do you do that and claim to have any leadership mantle?”

In response, China said that President Xi Jinping had to send a written response instead of delivering a public address due to a lack of opportunity.

China’s chief climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua said  “five years were wasted” because Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement and it was time to “work harder and catch up”.

Also read | World leaders at COP26 vow to cut methane emissions by 30%

China and the United States are the world’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide. Russia occupies the fifth spot in this list.

Meanwhile, Kremlin also issued a statement saying that Russia takes the ”strongest and most vigorous measures to conserve woodlands.”

Earlier, Biden had said ”Tackling the climate crisis is an economic opportunity.” 

Also read | Race for fossil fuels created ‘geo-political tensions, says PM Modi at COP26

”At Biden’s press conference we saw the whiplash of his rhetoric on climate in action. First, he asks Opec to pump more oil, then describes his worry about the horrors of climate change,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

”To set his climate ambition straight, it would be profound and game-changing for him to return to Washington and declare a national climate emergency to halt crude oil exports. That’s just one of the tools Biden has to take transformative action on climate without Congress. Biden sounds just as worried as the rest of us, but he has a power unlike anyone else’s. For the sake of us and the planet, he has to use it.”

Leaders at the COP26 global climate conference aim to keep alive a receding target of capping temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to avert still greater damage than has already been caused by greenhouse gases.

They have promised to stop deforestation by the end of the decade and cut emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane to help slow climate change.