Biden Under Pressure From All Corners for Climate Reparations

The United States will return to the global fight to keep the planet from overheating when President Biden arrives at the UN climate summit on Friday.

Instead of being hailed as a president who passed a historic climate law, Mr. Biden will join a gathering where developing nations have spent all week excoriating the United States and other industrialized nations.

The president of France said that Europe was already helping poorer countries. Europeans are paying according to him. The only ones paying are us.

In a not-too-veiled reference to the Americans, Mr. Macron said that pressure must be put on rich non- European countries.

There isn't much Mr. Biden can offer with control of Congress still up in the air. There will be less money to help foreign nations cope with climate change if Republicans are in charge.

Even with Democrats in the majority on Capitol Hill, Mr. Biden has failed to make good on an earlier promise by the United States to contribute to a fund to help poor nations.

Last year, Mr. Biden secured just $1 billion towards his goal of $11.4 billion annually by the year 2024.

Some countries view Mr. Biden's effort as insufficient, according to the dean of the school. She said that the language from developing countries was very sharp. African leaders say that the Congress is hard. Do the American people know what is going on to the planet?

The president of China, the president of Russia, and the president of India did not attend the climate talks.

Climate talks between the United States and China have been largely frozen since August over tensions around Taiwan, human rights and other issues. Informal meetings this week at the U.N. climate summit between John Kerry, President Biden's climate envoy, and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, may make it easier for substantive talks to take place.

The absence of the leaders of the other major emitting countries makes Mr. Biden more of a target.

The United States has been absent from discussions about a new fund to compensate developing countries for impacts from which they cannot recover, like a coastal town lost to rising seas.

In 2015, the U.N. forged an agreement with wealthy nations to provide $100 billion a year from public and private sources to developing countries to help them mitigate climate change.

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Rich nations have resisted calls for loss and damage. It has been difficult to define what loss and damage is and who should pay for it.

The defensive posture is showing cracks. Scotland was the first country to commit money for a new loss and damage fund. The president of the European Commission endorsed the idea this week. Mr. Xie, the climate negotiator for China, the largest emitter on the planet, was careful to say that China wouldn't contribute to the loss and damage fund.

Many of the European countries that are stepping up to the plate have colonial ties to the developing nations that may bolster the argument for compensation.

The root cause of climate change is due to the transfer of the rich resources of Asia and Africa to Europe. Extreme weather conditions are adding insult to injury and are costing a lot.

Paul Bledsoe, a climate adviser under President Bill Clinton and now a lecturer at American University, said that paying climate compensation to distant nations would be a disaster in the US. He thinks it will hurt Mr. Biden's re- election chances.

Mr. Bledsoe said that America is not culturally capable of meaningful compensation. There is little to no chance that they will be seriously considered regarding climate impacts to foreign nations. It isn't a good idea in our domestic politics.

According to a Morning Consult/Politico survey, a little more than half of registered voters think the US has a responsibility to increase its contributions to developing nations to help protect them against climate change. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say that the US needs to contribute more.

Mr. Biden and his advisers have shied away from the topic of money. Mr. Kerry will talk about the idea of a loss and damage fund.

White House officials have been trying to focus on Mr. Biden's signature achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act, and its record $370 billion in investments in clean energy that promise to significantly cut greenhouse gases generated by the United States.

Senior White House advisers went to the Red Sea resort town to insist that America's plan to cut emissions can't be reversed. The United States has twice withdrawn from global climate promises since the 1990s.

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The new law's investments in wind, solar, battery storage and other clean power are now baked into the U.S. tax code. We might have setbacks, but we are on track.

The new climate law and what it promises for Americans was not relevant to developing nations that need money now to recover from past climate disasters, according to a climate negotiator for a bloc of countries.

Richard Sherman is the lead negotiator for an African bloc of nations. He said that the United States tends to promise a lot but deliver very little.

The United States has not delivered what independent organizations estimate is its fair share of climate finance.

The United States gave just 5 percent of what it should have contributed in 2020. Mr. Topping said that all countries need to live up to their commitments.

He said that complaining about your politics is disrespectful to other countries. Politics is not easy.