Biden Seeks To Pour Billions In Taxpayer Dollars Into Global Climate Programs

By Nick Pope

President Joe Biden’s newest budget request calls for billions of taxpayer dollars to fund international climate programs.

The budget request furthers Biden’s goal to allocate a total of $11 billion in taxpayer funds to support international climate initiatives, including a $500 million payment in 2025 to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund. The Biden administration has made a major effort to reassert the U.S. as a leader in international climate diplomacy, even while countries like India and China are expanding their use of coal to produce power.

The budget request calls for $3 billion in funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE) program, which is “a whole-of-government effort to help more than half a billion people in developing countries adapt to and manage the impacts of climate change,” according to the White House. The $500 million payment to the Green Climate Fund is a part of the PREPARE funding, and the budget also requests $100 million for the Amazon Fund to prevent deforestation.

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. has spent billions on international climate finance, with 2023 funding for such initiatives reaching approximately $9.5 billion, according to the budget request’s text. That figure is nearly six times larger than the amount of money the American government was spending on similar initiatives in 2021, when Biden took office.

Recently-departed Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and other Biden administration officials made a splash at the 2023 United Nations climate summit, known as COP28, when they pledged $17 million to the so-called “loss and damage” fund. Energy sector experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the “loss and damage” fund is effectively a “climate reparations” program, whereby wealthy nations transfer money to poor and developing countries as compensation for climate change purportedly driven by economic activity in wealthier nations over time.

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

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