Biden touts climate legacy in landmark Amazon visit
‘Folks, we don’t have to choose between an environment and the economy. We can do both’
MANAUS: US President Joe Biden paid an historic trip to the Amazon rainforest on Sunday to promote his record on fighting climate change, insisting it would survive Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Biden flew over the jungle by helicopter and met with Indigenous leaders in the Brazilian city of Manaus on the penultimate leg of a valedictory South American tour which has been overshadowed by Trump’s election win.
The 81-year-old Democrat is the first sitting US president to visit the Amazon.
Don’t have to choose
“Folks, we don’t have to choose between an environment and the economy. We can do both. We’ve proven it back home,” Biden said in a short speech in a nature reserve, framed by vivid green forest cover.
Without referring to Trump by name, he said he would leave his Republican successor and his country “a strong foundation to build on, if they choose to do so.”
“It’s true - some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America. But nobody - nobody - can reverse it,” he declared.
On Sunday, the White House announced that the US had hit its target of increasing bilateral climate financing to $11 billion a year.
It said that the figure reached this year was six times what the US was providing when Biden took over from Trump in 2021.
The money, which helps developing countries adapt to climate change, has made “the United States the largest bilateral provider of climate finance in the world,” the White House said.
The European Union, however, remains the biggest global contributor to climate financing.
Outshone by Xi
Trump’s return to the White House looms large over Biden’s last major foreign tour as president, which began with a gathering of Asian-Pacific partners in Lima and ends with a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro starting Monday.
Climate financing for developing nations is one of the topics on the G20 table, with calls for the world’s richest countries to rescue stalled UN climate talks taking place at the same time in Azerbaijan.
While striking a defiant note about Trump, Biden has cut an at-times forlorn figure on his farewell tour of a region the US views as its backyard.
All eyes in Lima were on Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was received with greater fanfare than the lame-duck US leader.
At a meeting with Biden, the Chinese leader was already looking to the new Trump era, saying he was ready to work with the “America First” leader and hoped for a “smooth transition” in relations.
America’s allies fear Trump could again pull the United States, the world’s second-biggest polluter, out of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on combatting carbon emissions, as he did during his first term.
On Saturday, he nominated a fracking magnate and noted climate change skeptic, Chris Wright, as his energy secretary.
In another ominous sign, Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei, a major fan of Trump’s, this week pulled his country out of the UN climate talks.
Amazon on fire
The Amazon, spanning nine countries, is crucial to the fight against climate change due to its ability to absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But it is also one of the areas most vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation.
A recent study showed that the Amazon rainforest had lost an area about the size of Germany and France combined to deforestation in four decades.
This year it experienced the worst wildfires in nearly two decades, fueled by a severe drought blamed in part by climate experts on global warming.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to put a stop to illegal Amazon deforestation by 2030.
Biden on Sunday announced an additional $50 million towards a Brazilian fund aimed at protecting the world’s biggest jungle.
Experts have warned that the second Trump presidency could undo progress on the transition to green energy made under Biden, giving heavy polluters like China and India an excuse to scale back their own efforts.