Rich Nations Funding Poor Nations to Battle Climate Change is on the G-7 Agenda

June 7, 2021

This week, President Joe Biden heads to England for the Group of Seven summit being held in southwestern England. At the meeting in Cornwall, Biden and other G-7 leaders will discuss a number of issues but acknowledged that adequate climate financing for the most at-risk nations must be a central priority. 

The Washington Post reports:

… G-7 leaders are facing mounting pressure to make good on a promise that the United States and others have not kept: that rich nations would mobilize at least $100 billion annually to help developing countries build greener economies and deal with the intensifying catastrophes caused by climate change.

President Trump worked to get out of the unfair Paris Agreement that forced the U.S. to give billions in funds to other nations and instead focused on bolstering efforts within our country like LNG production. This clearly paid off as we previously reported, “U.S. LNG exports increased 33% from 2019, the largest growth in the world, according to the International Gas Union’s World LNG.”

Contrary to the eco-left’s belief that all fossil fuels are bad, even Jonathan Pershing, a State Department adviser to climate envoy John Kerry, said “low carbon doesn’t necessarily mean no fossil fuel. It does not serve anyone to cut things off,” Pershing added, citing a “need to maintain reliability and security in the existing grids.”

Now that President Biden has committed to rejoining the Paris Agreement and invoked a number of policies domestically against the fossil fuel industry, that grid reliability and security are in jeopardy.

President Biden recently asked Congress to once again increase funding for international climate assistance. His proposed budget contains hundreds of millions of dollars for various multilateral initiatives, including a request for $1.2 billion for the Green Climate Fund, the main U.N.-backed conduit to climate projects throughout the developing world. Barack Obama pledged $3 billion to the fund toward the end of his presidency, but the United States has remained $2 billion short after Trump walked away from the Paris accord and stopped payments to the fund.

The White House has vowed to double U.S. public climate financing for developing countries by 2024, compared to the average level during Obama’s second term, and to triple the amount of financing designated to helping poorer countries adapt to impacts that are causing destruction.

Biden’s Climate Envoy John Kerry admitted, “Almost 90 percent of all of the planet’s global emissions come from outside of U.S. borders. We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved.” Not only is President Biden forcing policies that actually would not even make a dent on the Paris Agreement’s climate goals, but he is also directing billions in funds to foreign nations instead of focusing on our recovery following the recent global pandemic that shook our economy.