On Climate, Joe Biden Gets The Whole GLOBAL Thing

Yeah, yeah, he's a globalist. We kind of live on a globe, and it's warming.

During a climate meeting with world leaders Thursday, President Joe Biden announced he plans to increase US funding to help Brazil fight deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, and to help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels and survive the challenges of a warming planet. In a virtual meeting of the "Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate," Biden pledged $500 million over five years to the Amazon Fund, an international fund to help cut deforestation in Brazil, and another $1 billion to the UN's Green Climate Fund, which would be double the current US commitment.

The Catch-'23 is that Congress would have to approve any such funding, and Republicans in the House are dead set against spending money on foreign aid, especially not on climate aid, because the GOP refuses to accept that climate change or other countries are even real.

The amounts Biden pledged are simultaneously 1) not in any sense a budget buster, 2) more than the US has ever pledged for international climate aid, 3) only a drop in the bucket of what's needed to do the job, and 4) far too much for Republicans, who doubtless think developing countries should pay us for helping entire coastal cities become beachfront property.

Biden urged the world leaders in the meeting, whose nations are responsible for about 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, to step up aid to developing countries, which will be hardest hit by climate change:

All of you know as well as I do: The impacts of climate change will be felt the most by those who have contributed the least to the problem, including developing nations.

As large economies and large emitters, we must step up and support these economies. [...]

Together, we need to strengthen the role of multilateral development banks in fighting climate crisis as well, starting with the World Bank. Because climate security, energy security, food security, they’re all related. They’re all related.

Biden touted the progress his administration has made toward addressing the climate crisis, primarily through the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which are projected to reduce US greenhouse emissions by 40 percent of 2005 levels by 2030 — possibly more, even, since some of the investments can't be modeled. (When the people in your life ask you what Joe Biden has ever done, that'd be a good one to keep in your back pocket!) He asked the other leaders to also do more to decarbonize by transitioning to clean energy, to preserve and restore forests, to reduce non-CO2 greenhouse gases like methane, and to work on developing carbon capture technologies to scrub carbon from the atmosphere.

 The New York Times notes that Biden's call for greater support for the Amazon Fund comes as Brazil's new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has been working closely with Biden on climate issues. The fund was founded in 2008, with the largest chunks of money coming from Norway and Germany, but was suspended under former President Jair Bolsonaro, who actively rolled back protections for the Amazon rainforest and indigenous tribes living there. Deforestation in the Amazon basin has reached levels that threaten to change the region's weather systems, and which could in turn convert much of the rainforest to savanna. Already, the Times points out, "as trees are cut down, parts of the forest now emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb."

Thank goodness Republicans are here to be assholes about all this; Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) dismissed Biden's call for increased international climate commitments, pointing out that in recent congressional testimony, the head of the US Forest Service said the agency didn't have enough money to adequately manage US forests. (Why does the Forest Service not have sufficient funding? Probably not because Democrats hate trees, buddy!)

“Why are they now sending half a billion U.S. taxpayer dollars to Brazil for theirs?” Mr. Barrasso asked. “The higher priority would be to take care of our own resources first, or better yet, save taxpayers the pain of ever watching President Biden splash American treasure around the globe to chase his environmental agenda.”

Barrasso then presumably lit a cigar with a burning capybara.

Still as the Times explains, Republican intransigence may not entirely doom Biden's pledge of climate help to other countries:

Last year, Republicans cut funds that the administration had pledged to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations-led program to help poor countries transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and increase resilience to climate disasters. On Thursday the administration said it would deliver $1 billion to the fund, tapping discretionary funds within the State Department, according to an administration official.

Seems a hell of a lot better use of already appropriated funds than stealing funds from Defense Department schools for children of military families to build WALL, that's for damn sure.

[ CNBC / NYT / White House ]

Programming Note: Yes, I am still planning aWonkette Book Clubread of Kim Stanley Robinson's 2020 climate novel  The Ministry for the Future,  and I will do a post next week with the details. If you wanna get a head start on reading, the link there gives Yr Wonkette a cut of any sales, but you can also feel free to get the book used or from your local library, assuming Republicans haven't defunded it yet.

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